Suspicion of voyeurism in the toilets of the Cochin hospital (Assistance publique des Hôpitaux de Paris) in Paris (VIe). On Thursday, a doctor at this hospital was surprised to discover a phone in the toilets of the psychiatric department. It was obviously not an oversight, but more likely a smartphone installed there to film the users of the toilets in their strictest privacy.
The police were informed and the presumed owner of the phone was quickly identified. It is a member of the staff. He was arrested and placed in police custody. He was found in possession of a USB key, which naturally intrigued the police. No information has been leaked at this stage about the content of the digital media or the function of the employee within the hospital. The suspect is said to have admitted to installing the device, three weeks old.
“Pending the conclusions of the ongoing investigation, the employee was immediately suspended,” said the headquarters of the AP-HP this Friday afternoon. The Paris prosecutor’s office, when contacted, could not be reached.
Filming the intimacy of others without their consent is punishable by law. Last October, a 61-year-old lawyer was sentenced on appeal in Paris to one year of suspended prison sentence for taking pictures with his phone under the skirts of the female colleagues at the law firm where he worked, four years earlier. He was also ordered to pay them €3,000 and €4,000 in damages. In Moselle, in January 2023, a former engineer at a steel group was sentenced to three years of social follow-up and mandatory treatment. He had over 200 videos and 100,000 photos of female colleagues in the toilets. A hole had been drilled at waist height to spy on them.
