On Saturday morning, after a 12-hour night shift at a Melbourne hospital, I went to the police station to identify myself as one of the women filmed without my knowledge or consent in a toilet cubicle at work.
The scale of this case is staggering. Police claim that what was initially thought to be about 400 women has ballooned out to more than 1000, as detectives go through the painstaking task of identifying and contacting every alleged victim.
Police believe that a junior doctor spent years covertly filming women in bathrooms and toilets, including at three Melbourne public hospitals where he was training.
They allege that what began with the discovery of one hidden phone camera earlier this year has spiralled into the recovery of more than 10,000 images and videos of women using toilets and showers.
If proven guilty, it’s a shocking case of duplicity – a doctor earnestly talking to colleagues about sick patients while allegedly filming our most private moments with a hidden camera.
As staff, we were first informed of the police investigation about four months ago, and then waited to find out who might have been impacted. Both the police and our workplaces have been exceptionally supportive.
At my age, 54, I thought I might be off the hook as a victim of an accused predator in the workplace. Then last week I was contacted by a detective from the Sexual Offences and Child Abuse Investigation Team.
She said there were now 1020 victims, some of whom were deeply distressed at the alleged invasion of their privacy.
We were required to attend one-on-one police interviews to positively identify ourselves from screenshots of recorded material and then sign statements confirming we were filmed without our knowledge or consent.
That was the most surreal part – sitting in a police station looking at a picture of myself using the bathroom. For privacy reasons, it was just an upper body shot, but the context was clear.
As I sat in my car afterwards, I felt a familiar bubble of anger. Not just about this incident, but a lifetime of gendered aggressions. All the times I’d been subjected to sexist behaviour and different forms of verbal, physical and domestic abuse.
As women, it’s like we store a PTSD file in our brains and every new violation triggers a re-run of the whole movie.
It will be interesting to see what kind of legal arguments are used in this case.
The defence for crimes against women, perpetrated by men, has historically been steeped in misogyny. Attack the character and credibility of women, re-cast the perpetrators as victims, and avoid accountability and consequences. Even today, the majority of crimes against women go unpunished.
In this case, the defence successfully argued that the accused should be out on bail, with strict conditions, until a County Court trial next year.
The alleged offender is expected to face hundreds of charges related to stalking, producing intimate images and secretly installing surveillance devices.
My hope is that the public discourse around this case does not reduce it to a random isolated incident and that it is instead seen within the cultural context of our indifference and inaction on crimes against women.
It makes my stomach drop to think of you sitting in that room, having to look at a photo that never should have existed. You didn’t deserve that. No one does.
Your anger makes sense. It’s the kind that comes from years of being told to tolerate things that should never have been normal. You’ve named what happened clearly and honestly, and that takes strength.
I’m here. Truly. If you want to talk, or sit in silence, or just have someone who understands without needing explanations, I’m right beside you…
Oh gosh! So sorry to hear that happened to you and all of those other women! What a creep that guy is!