Housemate who secretly recorded us has been made a lecturer at UK university

[Smurfsarethefuture]

I cannot be unreasonable here. I wrote on here about two yrs ago about my housemate who hid a camera in our kitchen. He is now a lecturer at a London uni.

The police were not interested neither was landlady- I didn’t contact university and am now wondering should I?

@Smurfsarethefuture
purposefully unhelpful, obtuse and evasive

???

Would I have acknowledged the link to previous threat if I was being evasive?

Your comments are bizarre - there is no evasion here.

@DappledThings

No, police first.

Hi op you are not being unreasonable and your instinct is spot on. He is a creep with a very common paraphilia. There are so many like him he has no boundaries and has a cover for his activities. Sadly low level behaviours are not taken seriously although time and time again we see them progress into full blown offending. No point in reporting it now at all although I disagree with the status quo that really is the way it is.

I ‘m going to ask MNHQ to look into this thread or take it down as something seems off to me.

It's quite possible that he has hacked your phone, set up twenty sockpuppet accounts on Mumsnet, and is trying to gaslight you into thinking everything is fine.

Maybe mention this in your complaint to his employer.

[quote Smurfsarethefuture]@MattHancocksSexTape

No, it’s not about people agreeing with me or not.

There is something wrong when people are so defensive of behaviour like this. Some posters have written very thoughtful replies, which I appreciate but the antagonistic ones? I don’t think they serve a purpose. I’m not deranged, unbalanced, petty or anything like that - I didn’t report him and left the house.[/quote]
You did post in AIBU 🤷‍♀️

This is insane. You say this thread feels off, but on your other thread that someone linked on a previous page, you said your other housemates and your landlady weren’t even bothered by it in the slightest. He gave you an explanation and it sounds plausible to me, much more believable than someone setting up a camera in the kitchen in the hope of catching housemates in their pajamas

Enough similarities to make me roll my eyes at some of the weird responses here when compared to sensible comments on the other. Secret recording, of a woman, by a male, living in the house, in common areas. Yup @HeyDemonsItsYaGirl, that’s really different . Crack on and report it OP, you should. Enough apologising and excusing already for this creepy man’s behaviour! Hope no one I love is being taught by him.

@Smurfsarethefuture

I also thought that the police kept records to see if there were patterns of behaviour.

I was told, by the police and then the IPO, that this isn't the case and there is no functionality for the police to record unproven cases against people.

They will record what someone is charged with, and the outcome, and that can be used in some cases to identify patterns - eg if you'd been accused of theft on a number of occasions, an application could be made to a judge the next time to enter the previous cases as evidence, even if you hadn't been convicted - but it'd depend on circumstances and relevance.

Sadly, although I'm very uncomfortable with him now having a position of responsibility, I don't think you'll get far with doing anything now if the police dismissed the case at the time and he was never charged.

I'd second that if this happened at the same uni that he is now lecturing at, you could contact them to share your concerns - I'd hope that they'd attempt to investigate, at least, although they may feel that the investigation has been impaired after so much time.

@plodalong12

This is insane. You say this thread feels off, but on your other thread that someone linked on a previous page, you said your other housemates and your landlady weren’t even bothered by it in the slightest. He gave you an explanation and it sounds plausible to me, much more believable than someone setting up a camera in the kitchen in the hope of catching housemates in their pajamas

What was the reason, I can’t access the other thread. The ops comments just feel malicious and spiteful. Likes she’s envious this guy is a success and wants to ruin it for him

Thank you @Take and @surfer

You are telling people half the story and refusing to clarify your original post, hence the responses you are getting.

Anyway I agreed with another poster that you should have contacted his university at the time.

If he was just recording you for research reasons, hadn't got your expressed permission then they would have told him off and threatened to kick him of his PhD and out of the university if he didn't stop.

I've helped masters and PhD students with their research plus done my own uni research with people and you have to obey the ethics standards of your university. This includes getting people's express permission.

However if you don't get people's consent it doesn't mean your actions are a criminal offence.

The difficulty for the university or any employer is that he hasn't been charged or convicted of any crime. Legally they can't do anything. I appreciate that it must have been a deeply upsetting exprerience but as the police didn't take it forward at the time his / her employer can't take action about the allegation now.

^This.

I'd have an expectation of not being filmed even in shared areas of a multi occupided house - but my privacy expectation would be lower in kichen than bedroom/bathroom were I would expect police to be interested.

If it was research - I would have expect a headsup and complaining around ethical guidelines of his research was good previous advice.

I'm not surpised you still shaken by experience but I don't think there's much you can do about him.

[quote Smurfsarethefuture]@DappledThings

No, police first.[/quote]
So you went to the university second 2 years ago as well? What did they say then?

I would raise this with the university if you have evidence. It breached rights to privacy and GDPR, two things that lecturers should really understand. If you don’t have evidence, then much as you are right to be angered by the lack of consequences, unfortunately it will just be seen as malicious.

As someone who fought hard to get into academia, it upsets me when men like this get through.

[quote Smurfsarethefuture]@DappledThings

No, police first.[/quote]
You said you didn’t get past the desk clerk. Did you make a police report?

You then said you “didn’t report it and left the house.”

It’s just that if you are hoping notes have been made to evidence a pattern of behaviour but you haven’t actually managed to make a report with the police or his PhD supervisor at the time, what is there to add to?

I mean this kindly - are you feeling a bit guilty that you didn’t report it to his supervisor at the time and now feel you have to make amends? You said in your previous thread you had a lot going on. His behaviour is not your responsibility. There really doesn’t seem to be much you can do now and if he does commit a crime in the future there is nothing you can do right now that would prevent that. Not your fault.

There is something wrong when people are so defensive of behaviour like this. Some posters have written very thoughtful replies, which I appreciate but the antagonistic ones? I don’t think they serve a purpose. I’m not deranged, unbalanced, petty or anything like that - I didn’t report him and left the house

What's wrong and off about the thread is that you did not explain what his reasons were for filming in the kitchen, nor that he stopped doing this and filmed out of a window.
There's a link to your original thread and several pages down on that thread you explain that he said he was filming movement as part of his research.
Why did you not include this information in this thread?

I've said above that I would have been furious if someone was filming movements in the kitchen for research but that this was not sinister in the way you are implying. You asked him to stop so he moved the camera so it was not filming the kitchen.

Now you're claiming there's something "off" about the thread because you are not getting the replies you wanted.

OP: He did cause a lot of stress in the house, he also left without paying bills, etc.

OP: I didn't contact the university

OP: Very passive, no?

Yes, OP, you were very passive. Not anyone on here. Why didn't you go after the non payment of bills? Why didn't you contact the university?

It's a bit late now.

@Flowers500

If you're going to be purposefully unhelpful, obtuse and evasive then you can't expect others to give you the benefit of the doubt. And as others have uncovered from your previous posts, you are intentionally not representing the situation correctly.

This. 👆

Your previous thread has been found and doesn’t substantiate your insistence of a “safeguarding concern”. And you were deliberately vague at the start of this thread. Now we appear to know why.

I think you should drop this before you get into trouble for stalking or harassment.

Have read the last replies - I see there was nothing in particular to report about the filming.

He was filming movements as part of a research project.

your only sensible recourse is to the ethics committee that approved the research project, and also possibly to the data protection dept of the university. the project should have had an ethics approval and a data protection approval to be covered by GDPR. if it did not, the university he was at during his PhD could sanction him (including withdrawing published papers).

But you should have done all this 2 years ago. There is no point in continuing to worry about this now.

OP I have some experience of this. An ex boyfriend from when I was 18 had secretly filmed us having sex and distributed it to his mates.

Horrendous.

But also completely different from what happened to the OP. She did go to the police. Fair to assume that the police have all the details about what happened. The police chose not to take it further. 2 years later, she wants to go to his employer about it?

@bongsuhan

"Wow. Ok then. Of course some teachers are not going to be great people....but there’s ‘not great people’ and sex criminals. I’m comfortable with making a distinction, personally!"

My point is exactly that - some extremes aside - you can't tell if someone is "great" or "not great" from one episode in their past.

Well we will have to agree to disagree then because I am convinced that anyone who has made and distributed sex videos of his unwitting teenage girlfriend is not a great person and never will be. There is a minuscule chance they have changed entirely and fundamentally as a person but it’s too great a risk to have someone who has shown such perverted and evil tendencies teaching teenage children. You are far too quick to give people in a position of trust over children the benefit of the doubt and it’s scary to me that there might be others like you working in school management.

I just read your full other thread. If you try to create job issues for him now then frankly I think he should report you to the police for harassment. You don't have any "safeguarding concerns" and you intentionally didn't tell the full story as you KNEW you were not in the right to try to make this a career-ending thing.

He was a shitty housemate. As anyone who has been to uni will tell you, at least 10-20% of the population fall into this category then go on to be completely normal, boring employees.

Grow up and get a new hobby! You're weirdly obsessed with him.

The time to complain would have been 2 years ago to his PhD supervisor about the ethics of his research (capturing motion).

If his PhD is in this field then it is hard to say there was voyeristic or malicious reasoning behind it. If his PhD was something completely unrelated the it would be more concerning.

Unless there is a lot more to it that has been said on here, there are no major safeguarding concerns that you need to be flagging.

How are others able to read the earlier thread. I get an oops not found message.