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”’I WAS fiddling with the video recorder and just pressed the wrong button,” says Stéphane, one of the alleged victims in a curious case that is currently before the French courts. ”All of a sudden the TV screen started showing the girl from the room next door in the shower.”

Appartement cam

Most of us would put this down to sheer coincidence and leave it at that, but Stéphane for some reason grew suspicious and began fiddling about in the bathroom of his rented accommodation (surely in breach of the tenancy agreement) and soon discovered a video camera hidden in a false ceiling.

The Guardian reports that he found further cameras in an alarm clock by his bed and a fake fire extinguisher on his wall. Police later discovered another 14 around the premises. The landlord, a married couple in their sixties, were found to have ”several hundred cassettes” of material covertly filmed in this way. Their lawyer said that the cameras had been installed because they were afraid for the safety of their niece, who had ”suicidal tendencies”.

He would not confirm that one of the tapes, filmed using an infra-red camera, appears to show a male lodger shaving his chest in bed under cover of darkness.

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Posted: 14th, August 2002 | In: Broadsheets Comment | TrackBack | Permalink