Undercover creep

Hundreds of women and children are likely to be the victims of sex offenders without knowing it because of the increasing sophistication of hidden spy cameras

- By DONNA CHISHOLM

After nearly 40 years as a cop, it's not surprising Detective Sergeant Rick Veacock knows where to look for potential trouble. But in the past few years, that's been in places it once hadn't occurred to him to look - the bathrooms of hotels, motels and rented baches where sex offenders have used spy cameras to film a pool of oblivious victims.

These days, the first thing he does when arriving at a rental is not to check the view from the window, but the one from a potential voyeur's camera as he inspects the bathroom.

“Sometimes, there’s soft toys on the shelves, the light fittings look a bit different or the air vent’s got something glistening in it. It’s just common sense and being a little bit nosy.”

Veacock, who's headed the Auckland City Child Exploitation Team since 2015, estimates the developments in technology that have enabled ever-tinier devices to be placed where most of us would never think to look - inside smoke detectors, air fresheners, light fittings or mirrors - have led to such offending doubling in the past decade.

In April, in the latest case of its kind, Auckland supermarket supply chain manager Micah Fala, 41, was jailed for four years after admitting to secretly filming 22 women and girls as young as 12 over more than a decade with cameras hidden in the bathrooms of homes he had access to.

The government appears to have no plans to ban the devices. However, newly appointed chief victims adviser Ruth Money - who was in court earlier this year as advocate for Fala's victims - says it might be difficult for legislation to keep up with technology, but that's no excuse to do nothing.