SOARING numbers of innocent people are being secretly perved at by voyeurs using clandestine cameras, according to the Ministry of Justice.

Figures released to The Dominion Post under the Official Information Act reveal the number of convictions for secret recordings in New Zealand more than quadrupled in the past four years.

In that period, convictions for intimate visual recordings increased from 35 to 2011 to 155 in 2014. Police figures also show arrests for such offending nearly doubled during that time from 38 in 2011 to 64 in 2014.

Arrests for publishing, importing, exporting or selling and possessing intimate visual recordings had also risen steeply in the past five years.

In July, New Plymouth man Gary Timothy Fenwick pleaded guilty to two charges of making intimate visual recordings. He disguised cameras in clothes-hooks and smoke detectors in a unisex toilet at the Event Cinema Complex.

In 2014, a Waikato man set up a camera in an air freshner container in his bathroom to spy on his daughter and two friends…..

The maximum sentence for making intimate visual recordings, possessing intimate recording in certain circumstances, publishing, importing, exporting or selling intimate visual recordings is three years in prison.

Full story: The Dominion Post, Mondat October 12, 2015. Page A1.