A North Vancouver man who rented out a room in his home to young female foreign students then filmed them with hidden cameras in their bedroom and bathroom has been handed a suspended sentence and two years probation.
Judge Doug Moss of the North Vancouver provincial court handed the sentence to William Scott Ralston, 61, after Ralston pleaded guilty Sept. 23 to a charge of secretly observing nudity - commonly known as voyeurism.
Ralston secretly filmed two women - both foreign students - who at different times had responded to a Craigslist ad listing a room for rent. The first woman rented a room in Ralston's East Esplanade apartment between Feb. 1 and March 15, 2008, where Ralston installed hidden cameras in the bathroom and bedroom, surreptitiously filming her showering, undressing and using the toilet, said Crown counsel Kristin Bryson. That woman never knew she had been filmed until the police contacted her.
In the second case, another woman rented the same room on March 30, 2010. She came out of the shower and was cleaning up the bedroom when she noticed a strange-looking speaker on a bookshelf facing her bed. She opened it up and found a small camera with an antenna inside.
The woman immediately went to police.
Police later searched Ralston's home under a search warrant. Besides the camera in the bedroom, they also discovered a second hidden camera in the bathroom. Both cameras had live feeds into Ralston's bedroom. They also found explicit video recordings from the cameras that Ralston had copied on to DVDs and stored with a collection of Girls Gone Wild videos, said Bryson.
Both women were horrified to find out they had been filmed, Bryson said.
After he was arrested, Ralston at first denied he had filmed his tenant, then said he had cameras installed for "security purposes."
He later acknowledged he had made some very explicit recordings, said Bryson.
A psychologist's report said Ralston was a low risk to re-offend, although he continued to deny the recordings were for sexual purposes. Moss ordered Ralston to get counselling, not to have any roommates or tenants and not to possess any video cameras while he's on probation.
