Thanks to a loophole in Virginia law, a 34-year-old man convicted of using a videocam to photograph up the skirts of teen mallgoers will receive just ten days in prison.
The problem with Virginia law covering Jeffrey Swisher's crime at the time he was caught is that it wasn't a strictly defined offense – the law was written before the advent of camera technology advancements and the Internet – thus Swisher could only be convicted of disorderly conduct.
"We're trying to tighten the code," said Virginia state representative John Cosgrove, who is sponsoring legislation to turn Swisher's act into a written crime, "so some pervert isn't able to do that."
"It was unbelievable," Bunny Brunt, the mother of one of Swisher's victims, told reporters. "And it wasn't only my daughter; he had other kids. God knows how many tapes he had."
Swisher, for his part, blamed his behavior on financial difficulties and the skirt length on the girl, whose mother reportedly chased him through the mall until catching him.
While sympathizing with efforts to stop the likes of Jeffrey Swisher, First Amendment attorney Lawrence G. Walters told reporters restricting public photography could turn ordinarily well-meaning people – photojournalists, or other hobbyists, for example – into criminals merely by one person's underwear being inadvertently exposed in a given photograph.
"Certainly it's a good idea to stop perverts from filming down women's blouses or up little girls' skirts," Walters was quoted as saying. "But we have to step back as a society once we get past that visceral reaction and think this through."
Virginia isn't the only state where victims learn the hard way that video voyeurism isn't against the law. "It was really frustrating and depressing," one such victim, Jolene Jang of Seattle, told reporters. "I felt helpless
Her case ended up exacerbating the problem in Washington, after an uproar over the state supreme court holding that taking pictures up a woman's skirt in a public place wasn't illegal. The uproar provoked state lawmakers to amend the appropriate state law almost at once.
California amended a law four years ago to address video voyeurism, as did Hawaiian lawmakers in 2002. Nineteen states total have laws punishing video voyeurism specifically, according to Privacy Journal, while 38 have privacy laws addressing camera surveillance.
Two months ago, President Bush signed the Video Voyeurism Prevention Act, but even it has a loophole: It only applies to federally-owned land or grounds.
