Daddy Was Watching: Secret Photos of Nude Daughter Weren't Illegal Under Massachusetts Law

Dad's nude pics of unknowing daughter would now be considered illegal.

ByABC News
May 28, 2003, 10:39 PM

July 3, 2007 -- This story originally aired May 29, 2003.

Crystal's parents were away on vacation when she made a disturbing discovery on her father's computer: nude pictures and she was the subject.

Crystal says her father, Ron, who had adopted her when she was a young girl, retrieved the pictures via a computer Web camera in her bedroom, which had previously been in his office. The photos stretched back five years, to when she was 19.

She made the discovery while her parents were on vacation. Crystal told her mother when they returned from their trip.

"When I think about it, I feel like I'm going to vomit," Crystal said.

Crystal would not give her last name to protect her family's privacy, and she didn't want pictures of her family, including her father, shown.

When Crystal tried to turn copies of the photos over to police to press criminal charges against her dad, she got another surprise. Under state law in Massachusetts, it was not a crime to take pictures of someone without his or her knowledge, even nude pictures.

At the time in 2003, Elizabeth Scheibel, Northwestern District Attorney for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, told ABC News that state law had a major loophole. While it was a crime to make audio recordings of adults without their knowledge, people could take all the pictures they wanted without being arrested or prosecuted.

The trouble began when Crystal moved back into her family home in Easthampton, Mass., at age 19.

While she was gone, her father had used Crystal's old bedroom as his home office, complete with a computer equipped with a Web camera. When she moved back into her old room, his computer remained in her bedroom. Crystal had no idea that the Web camera could be on when the computer was off.

But one day Crystal was lying in bed when she noticed the lens of the camera that had been sitting on top of the computer was now aimed at her bed. Previously, it had always been pointed in a different direction.