He was caught aiming a palm-sized camcorder up a woman's dress at a church carnival. And when he turned himself in, he told the police the Internet made him do it.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer says David Bartolucci had never been in trouble with the law until this incident, but aiming the camcorder under the woman's summer dress through a red Winston cigarette camera bag meant her husband confronting him and him running for it, dropping the bag under a bush as he did.
And when police detectives played tape from the camcorder, it turned up with thirteen women having been filmed.
Police tell the Plain Dealer Bartolucci claimed to get the idea while surfing the Internet and catching sites showing clandestine photography of women's panties (upskirting) and cleavage (downblousing).
For now, though, prosecutors can only charge him with an existing misdemeanor, like voyeurism. Only California has an explicit law against upskirt photography - even though it's still legal there to post the stills on the Web for world consumption, the Plain Dealer says.
"Obviously, it's a terrible invasion of privacy for commercial purposes," said Patricia Ireland, president of the National Organization for Women, about such Web sites as allegedly inspired Bertolucci. "I'd like to just dismiss it as exceedingly juvenile. I associate it with disgusting little third-grade boys who used to pull up my dress… "The idea of drooling over secretly made tapes does carry dangerous overtones. I know that surreptitious photos are nothing new, but the distribution by the Internet makes it a more widespread problem."
Upskirt.com is one such site. And its creators tell the Plain Dealer that it's the very ordinariness of the women filmed and shown there which wins it a million visitors a month. "People are under the impression that they're going to see their next door neighbor, the nurse at the doctor's office, the kids' teacher," Drake said.
Visitors to Upskirt.com are greeted thus: "Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to infiltrate by every means possible the places where subjects are least expected to be seen. Armed with the latest surveillance equipment and a discerning eye, you will see hundreds upon hundreds of the BEST upskirt, voyeur and downblouse shots available anywhere! Plus: Spy resources, Hidden cam videos and amateur hardcore. Take a look through the keyhole and see for yourself…"
Members are also encouraged to send in amateur footage for collages, which Drake tells the Plain Dealer is perfectly legal - "unless they've rewritten the constitution." Even so, the site's disclaimer says they neither condone nor recommend "illegal or questionable activities."
In fact, Upskirt.com boasts the media attention it's allegedly received, including from talk show hosts Montel Williams and Johnnie (the O.J. Simpson murder trial) Cochran.
