Stealing women's underwear

[ArabeIIaScott]

An article on Andrew Miller talking about his history of fetishistic and paraphiliac behaviour.

https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/news/10715569/trans-butcher-andrew-miller-stealing-knickers/

Andrew Miller was well known locally for stealing underwear.

'“Searches of Miller’s home recovered numerous items of female children and teenagers’ underwear.”'

Looking into theft of women's clothing as apparently a fairly well known paraphilic behaviour, I can't find mention of it as a specific disorder or fetish in medical literature generally. There seems to be very little in the way of research/writing on it.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/26849134_Fetishism_and_Kleptomania_A_Case_Report_in_Forensic_Psychiatry

Seems this is enough of a commonly recurring behaviour to raise red flags?

And surely it should be treated as a sex crime rather than simple theft?

Well, I wasn't aware of it as a 'thing' until I read about it in the past couple of years on MN.

That poor young girl, she must have been absolutely terrified. Horrific

It was an absolutely horrific case. The only silver lining was her incredible resourcefulness and bravery. She waited til he was asleep, crept out and phoned the police. Thank god.

I hope she is doing ok, the only good thing Miller did was plead guilty - though I expect that was self motivated. Evil man.

We were staying near Galashiels last month and I kept on thinking back to this story and wondering how the young girl is getting on today. It was so nightmarish to read about at the time. He’s a horror of a man.

I don’t know how you would even begin to get past something like that — at any age probably, but especially hard at her age, I’d think.

May she recover and thrive, though

I think that it still happens.. my older Aunt will not peg her underwear out.
i think men who fancy women’s knickers want something worn by the woman… not a brand new packet from M and S.

I used to listen to a lot of true crime podcasts and cross dressing and theft of women's underwear or nightwear was a not uncommon occurrence among sexually deviant serial killers and rapists. Also there's that Australian one who says that his killing was motivated by his desire to be a woman. It makes me feel so sick thinking about it.

On Reddit the other day there was a comment that perhaps the large amount of trans identifying male sex offenders was because these men had not been provided their cross sex hormones in a timely manner!! It was a down voted comment but still...the fact that someone would even think and write that 🤢🤢🤢

Seeing this old thread pop up prompted me to search for the Guardian article which first made me think there might be a problem with my thinking on trans. It gave a lot of voice to a transwoman prisoner denied hair straighteners and makeup, without listing their crimes. I had a Google out of curiosity at the time and discovered Marie Dean did stuff like break into a teenager's house and film himself wanking in her underwear. I woke up pretty fucking sharp after that!

Anyway I searched for the article this morning and was surprised to read the article had added context with no footnote about it being amended: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/jan/27/marie-dean-trans-prisoner-male-prison-hunger-strike

Original from the wayback machine ^<a class="break-all" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20180127160631/www.theguardian.com/society/2018/jan/27/marie-dean-trans-prisoner-male-prison-hunger-strike" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://web.archive.org/web/20180127160631/www.theguardian.com/society/2018/jan/27/marie-dean-trans-prisoner-male-prison-hunger-strike^

Unusual for Guardian not to reference amendments, no?

Edit: I can't make the wayback link work.... Is that MN thing?

Yes, I'm sure they usually add a footnote to say they'e amended an article.

'Dean has been diagnosed with gender dysphoria and serving an indeterminate sentence for public protection (IPP) after being convicted of more than 30 offences including repeated burglary and voyeurism. Her crimes included breaking into several homes and filming herself wearing underwear belonging to teenage girls. The judge at her trial said she engaged in “behaviour that anyone is bound to find chilling”.'

This is the real reason women didn't leave their washing out overnight , especially in the cities where clothes were dried in communal and therefore easily accessible areas, and not the Mumsnet fear of "it being darked on"

Here’s a case that I remember from a few years back. The man involved was a village mayor at the time of the offences.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/lancashire/8501032.stm

A few excerpts -

“Ian Stafford, 59, who admitted three counts of burglary, resigned his post in Preesall after his arrest last year.
Preston Crown Court heard how he would creep into their bedrooms and search drawers for the underwear, before carrying out a sex act.
He was caught after one victim set up a hidden camera, catching him in the act.”

“Stafford had been working as a part-time handyman and gardener at his victims' homes for years and was trusted with access.”

[The judge said] “Your private desires or fantasies which should only be your concern became public when you decided to do what you did in the homes of those who trusted you," she told him.
The court heard the victims were "embarrassed, disgusted and shocked" to discover how the man they trusted was getting his "sexual kicks".
Speaking after the hearing, Det Con Steve Montgomery, said: "This has been a distressing ordeal for the victims involved, all of whom had let Mr Stafford into their homes, trusting him to carry out maintenance.
"They certainly did not expect him to search for, and steal, their possessions. There has been a breach of their trust in a very intimate nature."
"The victims are relieved that the court process is now over."

I absolutely agree @ArabeIIaScott that this type of offence should be treated as a sex crime.

This enraged me, at no point did the therapist tell him to stop stealing his wife's pants, and seems to blame her for her reaction.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2025/may/16/my-wife-caught-me-wearing-her-underwear-and-the-shame-is-eating-me-up

I don't leave my washing on the line if I'm not at home/over night for exactly this reason.

I've only had washing stolen off the line once but that was enough!

1993 I discovered some of my washing had been stolen from the line. The police's first question to me "did they steal your underwear?" (No, but they did steal my jogging bottoms)

I wonder if they still approach washing stealing with the assumption that it's a pervert despite it only being classed as normal theft?

Men are so fucking grim (not all I know)

It’s so ingrained in me that I don’t hang them out in a totally enclosed private garden.

I didn’t grow up with washing line theft being an issue, I suspect due to living on army bases with high security. Living in a close community like that, I imagine anyone trying it in those days would soon be found out and dealt with.

I do have the overnight washing darked-on/spider willies fear because of this place though 😁

I know this is a zombie thread but it <pokes> seems to have revived a little. I rarely leave washing out overnight and my washing line can only be seen by my immediate neighbour, and only part of it. If I have to hang my knickers on that bit of the line I always make sure the gussets are facing away from him

I came across this Unherd article a while ago but didn't read it because...yuck! However, this thread prompted me to go back and find it

https://unherd.com/2025/05/depops-dirty-little-secret/

I've always known men fetishised women's underwear. For so long that I don't even remember when I learned it. Blokes buying used pants of Vinted or from an only fans is one thing. You'd think with the rise of the Internet which means they could buy their own without the potential embarrassment of going into a shop they'd be...a lessening in demand, in thefts.

Anyway, my reckon is that there hasn't. I think in some cases it's a gateway. It'll escalate as legimately acquired drawers just don't do it for them anymore.

There is a Canadian serial killer, Russell Williams, who began by stealing pants, then burglary, then rape, then murder. He was in their armed forces. There are photos, bizarre selfies, of him grim faced in women's sexy lingerie he'd stolen. The last I heard he was in a male prison. Perhaps even Canada thought putting him in a women's was too far. Or perhaps he hasn't asked yet.

If the Police aren't treating underwear theft like voyeurism and flashing as a sexually motivated crime then they're idiots.

https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/19950505/2119295/stolen-underwear-an-occurrence-that-points-to-serious-problems

'After conversing about underwear with everyone from sex-offender therapists to prosecutors to cops who bust thieves with colorful stashes - as many as 240 pairs - of women's underwear, I learned that penniless women were not the source of the problem and that the theft was anything but a freak occurrence.
Said one female investigator in the Kirkland Police Department: "If (a burglary victim) can't find anything that's gone, the first thing I ask is did you check the underwear drawer?"
As ridiculous as the problem first appears, the sobering truth is that that impulse to steal underwear can be related to drives far more serious. Perhaps a quarter of all men who engage in such fetishes and nuisance behaviors also have raped women; half may have molested girls, indicates one major scientific study.'
...
'Psychiatry classifies underwear thefts as a fetish - sexual arousal by objects. The classics are women's shoes and women's underwear. And while such fetishes used to be regarded as singular eccentric behavior that was simply a nuisance, that is changing.

A major study of paraphilias (psychiatric lingo for sexual disorders characterized by sexual arousal from objects or abnormal situations like molesting children) provides strong evidence that men who engage in fetishes are likely to engage in other more dangerous activities.
The results of the 8-year study involving 561 men receiving treatment for possible paraphilia were published a few years ago in The Bulletin of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law.

The upshot is that men with sex disorders don't focus on one, and only one, activity. If you find an exhibitionist, chances are about 50-50 the guy has molested children. Half of the men who reported fetishes had also molested little girls. A quarter of them raped women. A conclusion of the study:
"Some professionals have considered exhibitionists, voyeurs and fetishists as being rather benign, nuisance paraphiliacs. These results, however, suggest that some (but not all) of the benign paraphilias may actually lead to very aggressive behaviors and should not be viewed as reliably benign."
The difficulty tracking these crimes, says Mark Fisher, a detective in the King County Police Sexual Assault Unit, is that they largely go unreported. When they are reported, they are typically written up as misdemeanor, generic property crimes. Even if the theft occurs during a burglary - bumping the crime up to a felony - it isn't necessarily declared a sex offense.'

I can't yet find the study referenced.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=96713&page=1

'...experts say fetish crimes — such as sock stealing and underwear theft — can be a warning sign that a suspect is capable of more dangerous crimes.

"One of the things it could indicate is that the person is working their way toward rape of a real person," said criminal profiler Pat Brown, CEO of the Pat Brown Criminal Profiling Agency. "By sneaking into someone's place, they're showing that they can invade their territory. What that person is showing the other person is that he has no problem invading her space.

"Taking someone's underwear does two things," Brown said. "It shows that you were there and that you're taking a souvenir of your accomplishment. He is getting as near to the person's skin, so to speak, as he can possibly get."'

Oh, from the UK:

https://www.standard.co.uk/hp/front/underwear-thieves-earn-place-on-sex-danger-list-7205264.html

'13 April 2012
Thieves who steal underwear from washing lines will be placed on the Sex Offender Register, the Government has said.
In a move likely to lead to a huge increase in the number of registered offenders, stalking and child kidnap will also earn a place on the danger list.'

Hm. Looks lifted from this. from 2006:

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-423536/Underwear-thieves-earn-place-sex-danger-list.html

'Child kidnap'! Wtf! Yeah, that behaviour is a leeetle problematic 😳

For sure.

I'm looking through the SO Act and can't find specific reference. I suppose it's going to be under theft that is sexually motivated.

Japan even has a specific name for underwear thieves: Shitagi Dorobo

https://medium.com/3t-nomad-english/beware-underwear-thieves-really-exist-in-japan-3add1447ce7b