LYNNWOOD — A cellphone-savvy teenager turned the tables on a suspected voyeur she believes was secretly recording her when she was in the shower.
On Wednesday, the 14-year-old girl was visiting the Lynnwood apartment of a man her family knows.
When she was taking a shower, she noticed his smartphone propped up against a small black bag containing bathroom items, according to court papers. On closer inspection, she noticed it was recording video and it was pointing in the direction of the shower, which has a transparent curtain.
She told police she stopped the recording and viewed the video that had footage of her undressing moments before.
She then opened a second video file. It showed her showering on another occasion earlier this summer. She told police she had no idea she had been recorded.
At that point, the girl decided to try to preserve evidence, court papers said. She told police she used her own cellphone to video record the original two video recordings. She didn’t want to alert the man that she knew of the existence of either video, court papers said.
She confronted him after her mother arrived and she was leaving his apartment.
The girl and her mother turned the video over to Lynnwood police.
The suspect told an officer that he had earlier turned on the recorder to video the girl playing with a dog in the living room. He said he forgot to turn it off and must have accidentally left it in the bathroom when he went to turn on the shower for her.
The man denied accidentally recording the girl in the bathroom on a previous occasion.
He said he deleted a video that he didn’t recognize that looked dark and as though it had been taken from inside his gym bag.
The officer arrested him for investigation of voyeurism and sexual exploitation of a minor.
A judge set bail at $5,000 in Everett District Court on Friday.
The girl’s mother told the judge the incident traumatized her daughter.
“She’s scared,” she said. “She’s not sleeping.”
Eric Stevick: 425-339-3446, stevick@heraldnet.com
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