Masseur jailed for secretly filming female clients

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Fishnut
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Masseur jailed for secretly filming female clients

Post by Fishnut » Wed Oct 20, 2021 2:26 pm

Julian Roddis, a masseur who used a digital clock with a secret webcam to secretly film over 900 female clients undressing, has had his jail term reduced from 4 years to 3 years following an appeal.

Roddis was caught after a client spotted that the clock was connected to his laptop and suspected something was up. She found an identical clock on Amazon which had a secret webcam and contacted the police. In a BBC interview she describes how the police responded.
I rang 101 [the police non-emergency number] and was booked in for an appointment the following day with two male PCs, where I showed them a picture of the clock and they asked "Are you sure it was that clock? Are you sure it was recording you?"

I said I could not be certain that it was, but it looks exactly the same and felt it was worth investigating regardless.

Then they said that they had spoken to a sergeant and that the best way forward was to confirm with the masseur if he had a legitimate reason to be recording people because they said he might feel that he needs to protect himself against accusations.

They indicated that they wanted me to go back and ask him why he was recording me, at which I pointed out I was five-and-a-half months pregnant and vulnerable and I didn't think it was a good idea to send a pregnant woman alone to ask him why he had recorded her. [my emphasis]
One of the main arguments against the Defund the Police movement is that we need police to investigate crime. But this is a classic example of police being provided with an allegation that deserves investigation and instead refusing to do so, and making the victim to do their work for them.

It was only after the victim made a complaint about how the case had been handled that they did anything. And when they did they found the clock had been used to make around 2,000 videos of over 900 women over the span of 2 years. As with almost every case of women reporting men for sexual crimes, whatever the level of severity, they turn out to be only the latest in a long line of victims.

Depressingly, despite having footage of more than 900 women, he was only charged with voyeurism against 9.

In the same article Det Insp Dave Savill, from Cambridgeshire Police, the force that investigated Roddis, was quoted as saying that officers,
"put a lot of time and effort and expertise into this investigation and the result shows the merit of the work we've done".
I'm trying to square this with them being unable to identify 890 of his victims despite having their images, the dates of their visits to him and, presumably, access to his bookings. Did they even put out a public appeal for women who'd seen him to come forward? I can't find any mention of one.

The court of appeals has, this week, decided that 4 years for secretly filming 900+ women was too harsh a sentence and so reduced it to 3. That's just over a day per victim.

In my googling I did, however, come across a similar case from 2018. Sunderland GP Thair Altaii filmed female patients during consultations and examinations and after a female patient suspected she was being covertly filmed he was discovered to have over 19,000 images of women, in various stages of undress. Despite this he was only found guilty on three counts of voyeurism and sentenced to 14 months in prison. Again, we have people who presumably have bookings and records of their interactions with the doctor yet somehow police are unable to match his victims with his patients. And he gets barely a slap on the wrist.
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Re: Masseur jailed for secretly filming female clients

Post by jimbob » Wed Oct 20, 2021 2:43 pm

They seem incapable of even recognising how their handling of such creepy crimes is a problem.

As opposed to just being crap - they actually were crap and think they did well. Utter lack of regard for women.
Have you considered stupidity as an explanation

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Re: Masseur jailed for secretly filming female clients

Post by temptar » Wed Oct 20, 2021 4:07 pm

Bear in mind that I keep mentioning that society has demonstrated a tolerance for crimes against women. So yeah, this does not surprise me.

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Re: Masseur jailed for secretly filming female clients

Post by Gfamily » Wed Oct 20, 2021 4:39 pm

Fishnut wrote:
Wed Oct 20, 2021 2:26 pm
Julian Roddis, a masseur who used a digital clock with a secret webcam to secretly film over 900 female clients undressing, has had his jail term reduced from 4 years to 3 years following an appeal.

In the same article Det Insp Dave Savill, from Cambridgeshire Police, the force that investigated Roddis, was quoted as saying that officers,
"put a lot of time and effort and expertise into this investigation and the result shows the merit of the work we've done".
I fear they would have had officers queueing up to review the recordings.
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Re: Masseur jailed for secretly filming female clients

Post by purplehaze » Thu Oct 21, 2021 11:28 am

Obviously there's a guilt aspect to this when it comes to men in blue viewing voyeuristic images of women. Also the legal service has a lot to answer for too.

Laughable that the images were for personal use only.

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Re: Masseur jailed for secretly filming female clients

Post by Troubled Joe » Thu Oct 21, 2021 11:40 am

purplehaze wrote:
Thu Oct 21, 2021 11:28 am
Obviously there's a guilt aspect to this when it comes to men in blue viewing voyeuristic images of women. Also the legal service has a lot to answer for too.

Laughable that the images were for personal use only.
Yeah, like having a house full of cannabis plants for you and you alone.

Thinking aloud unless he was offering more than massage in the first place the videos must be for a fairly niche market…. And presumably there would be some trace of where the footage was stored / uploaded?

The only other explanation I can think of is that his kink was the actual surreptitious taking of the footage - rather than getting off on the footage per se.

Doesn’t excuse it obviously but I’m struggling to comprehend the practicality of having that many videos - when do you find the time to do anything with them?
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Re: Masseur jailed for secretly filming female clients

Post by purplehaze » Thu Oct 21, 2021 11:50 am

Troubled Joe wrote:
Thu Oct 21, 2021 11:40 am
purplehaze wrote:
Thu Oct 21, 2021 11:28 am
Obviously there's a guilt aspect to this when it comes to men in blue viewing voyeuristic images of women. Also the legal service has a lot to answer for too.

Laughable that the images were for personal use only.
Yeah, like having a house full of cannabis plants for you and you alone.

Thinking aloud unless he was offering more than massage in the first place the videos must be for a fairly niche market…. And presumably there would be some trace of where the footage was stored / uploaded?

The only other explanation I can think of is that his kink was the actual surreptitious taking of the footage - rather than getting off on the footage per se.

Doesn’t excuse it obviously but I’m struggling to comprehend the practicality of having that many videos - when do you find the time to do anything with them?
Private groups such as Whatsapp. Plus dark web. There's a huge kink for voyeurism in private spaces - which specifically means those who are being filmed do not know it.

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Re: Masseur jailed for secretly filming female clients

Post by Troubled Joe » Thu Oct 21, 2021 11:58 am

purplehaze wrote:
Thu Oct 21, 2021 11:50 am
Troubled Joe wrote:
Thu Oct 21, 2021 11:40 am
purplehaze wrote:
Thu Oct 21, 2021 11:28 am
Obviously there's a guilt aspect to this when it comes to men in blue viewing voyeuristic images of women. Also the legal service has a lot to answer for too.

Laughable that the images were for personal use only.
Yeah, like having a house full of cannabis plants for you and you alone.

Thinking aloud unless he was offering more than massage in the first place the videos must be for a fairly niche market…. And presumably there would be some trace of where the footage was stored / uploaded?

The only other explanation I can think of is that his kink was the actual surreptitious taking of the footage - rather than getting off on the footage per se.

Doesn’t excuse it obviously but I’m struggling to comprehend the practicality of having that many videos - when do you find the time to do anything with them?
Private groups such as Whatsapp. Plus dark web. There's a huge kink for voyeurism in private spaces - which specifically means those who are being filmed do not know it.
Kind of what I was meaning - was his motivation purely his kink in voyeuristically videoing it - akin to a kleptomaniac stealing a packet of spaghetti when they already have 16 cupboards full of spaghetti at home and where the motivating force is the act of stealing rather than possessing the thing that is stolen - or dissemination via the channels you suggest? If the latter you would hope (naivety alert) it would have been pursued further, but……
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Re: Masseur jailed for secretly filming female clients

Post by purplehaze » Thu Oct 21, 2021 12:20 pm

It's already known that Wayne Couzens was on a Whatsapp sharing images.

Sorry for the link.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... -duty.html

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Re: Masseur jailed for secretly filming female clients

Post by plodder » Thu Oct 21, 2021 3:47 pm

Just want to point out that the defund the police movement originated in the US, where the police do all sorts of stuff that is often part of social care elsewhere. "Defund" in this sense means "reduce over-reach". It doesn't translate properly to the UK where the police mainly do public order and crime.

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Re: Masseur jailed for secretly filming female clients

Post by Bird on a Fire » Thu Oct 21, 2021 9:59 pm

Troubled Joe wrote:
Thu Oct 21, 2021 11:40 am
purplehaze wrote:
Thu Oct 21, 2021 11:28 am
Obviously there's a guilt aspect to this when it comes to men in blue viewing voyeuristic images of women. Also the legal service has a lot to answer for too.

Laughable that the images were for personal use only.
Yeah, like having a house full of cannabis plants for you and you alone.
Well the plants thing is entirely plausible ;)

Not everyone deletes files. My wife is a photographer and has terabytes and terabytes of old stuff she'll never look at again, but cba to sort out. She just copy-pastes the ones she wants to another folder.

The main issue here is the fundamental violation of privacy by somebody in a somewhat trusted position. Distributing the photos afterwards would be an aggravating factor, sure, but it's taking to them in the first place that's the main issue. What a piece of sh.t.
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