Are You Sure You're Alone?
Peeping Toms are using cutting edge technology to violate your privacy.
Nov. 16, 2006 — -- They are at once your most basic, and yet most intimate, moments.
Walking around in your bedroom, undressing, showering, going to the bathroom. You might dance, or sing, or talk to yourself throughout these small slices of life, your daily routines.
But these routines also allow us to be alone and ourselves for a few rare moments, free from other eyes and our own insecurities.
However, what if your private moments weren't really private? What if your most intimate moments were videotaped and provided fodder for a perverted fantasy? What if you were not only being watched but also secretly taped to fulfill the dark desire of a neighbor, co-worker or even a friend?
This is called video voyeurism, the tech age's version of standing in someone's backyard, watching them through a window. Yet these modern-day Peeping Toms use much more secret and high-tech methods to watch people in places ranging from their bedroom to an office bathroom.
If you were a victim of these voyeurs, would you feel safe? Would you ever feel free or alone again?
That is how many victims of video voyeurs feel, and many more don't even realize they're being victimized.
"We were raped unknowingly at his given will whenever he wanted to stick in a tape, whenever he wanted to film us," Yvonne Goodwin told ABC News.
Goodwin and her Huntington Beach, Calif., neighbor, Meagan Rogers, say they were secretly videotaped for more than six years by their neighbor, who used to live at the end of their quiet cul-de-sac.
Little did they know that the neighbor had set up high-powered video cameras, aimed at the women's windows, catching them day and night going to the bathroom, getting ready for a night out, even dancing alone.
These women say the man even added clips from pornographic videos to the tapes of the women to enhance his fantasy.
"That's hard. That's extremely hard," Goodwin said of the discovery.
There are also the random acts, incidents involving "upskirting," the act of secretly looking or taking a picture up a woman's skirt while she is out in public.
Store surveillance tapes capture men dropping an item on the ground and snapping pictures up skirts with cell phone cameras as they bend to pick it up.
There are also "bag cameras" and "shoe cameras" these Peeping Toms use to discreetly get a view up a woman's dress while out in public.
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