Paris swimming pools scoured for secret cameras in voyeurism crackdown

The Georges Hermant swimming pool, where a woman claimed she was spied on in a changing room. Photo / Jean-Sebastien Evrard, AFP

Paris will launch a sweeping search of public swimming pools for hidden cameras and peepholes after a number of women said they had caught men spying on them as they undressed.

The city announced plans to inspect its 40 public pools after a 29-year-old journalist caught a man filming her while she was in the changing room of the Georges Hermant pool in the north-east of the city.

In an Instagram post, Laurène Daycard told of her experience, prompting other women to come forward with similar stories and catching the attention of city officials.

While getting dressed after a swimming session on April 1, Daycard said she spotted a rucksack poking out from under the partition into her changing room and noticed the lens of a smartphone hidden in a small opening.

“I shout angrily, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me, I’m being filmed!’ and pull open the bag to grab the phone,” Daycard wrote on Instagram.

“I feel resistance and a whiny voice replies, ‘It’s my bag’... A small man in briefs, in his 40s, finally emerges after a few minutes that seem like an eternity.”

With the help of pool staff, the man was detained until police arrived and later charged with aggravated voyeurism.

The 38-year-old man, who has no previous convictions, is separately being investigated for possession of child pornography.

Victims urged to come forward

Pierre Rabadan, the city’s deputy mayor for sports, said there is a gap between the cases pouring in on social media and official police reports, and urged victims to come forward if they suspect that they too had been filmed.

“We have relatively few cases reported to us,” he told Le Parisien, noting that since 2020 they have received about five official complaints.

“We need to collect these testimonies to ensure this happens as little as possible.”

Along with inspecting fitting rooms for peepholes, the city’s plan includes increased monitoring and training of agents, public messaging campaigns and studying the redesign of fitting rooms.

“The City of Paris is and will remain committed to ensuring that Parisian swimming pools remain safe places, accessible to all, where no woman should avoid going for fear of being assaulted. The city will always stand by victims,” a City of Paris statement said.

The use of hidden cameras came under the spotlight in the case of Dominique Pelicot who was sentenced to 20 years in prison for enlisting 50 strangers to rape his drugged wife, Gisèle.

His crimes were only discovered after a security guard caught him filming up the skirts of women in a supermarket.

‘Endemic’ sexual violence

On Wednesday, a report by French politicians found that sexual violence and sexual harassment were “endemic” in France’s entertainment industry.

Sandrine Rousseau, a Green MP, and centrist Erwan Balanant found that all sectors of the French culture and entertainment industry had become infected by “systemic, endemic and persistent” bullying, sexual violence and harassment.

The report follows last month’s sexual assault trial of Gerard Depardieu, which is being seen as a turning point for the #MeToo movement in France.

The 76-year-old actor is accused of sexually assaulting two women on a film set in 2021. Both have said that he touched them on intimate parts of the body. He denies being a sexual abuser.