An Illawarra father-of-two who used a hidden camera to secretly record him and his wife having sex has been sentenced to four months behind bars.
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The man, who the Mercury has chosen not to name so as to protect his partner’s identity, pleaded guilty in Wollongong Local Court on Friday to an aggravated charge of filming a person in private act without consent.
Court documents said police discovered 21 videos on a USB stick the man had surrendered to his partner in September 2016.
Seven video files depicted the pair having sex while the others show her naked in the shower and their bedroom.
The woman told police the footage stemmed back to 2008, when the pair began living together at Corrimal.
She said she was able to name the years they were recorded based on the number of tattoos on her husband’s body in each video.
She told officers she had discovered the recording device – described as a button hole spy camera – in the washing machine in January 2013 however her husband had dismissed it as an MP3 player at the time.
She confronted him when she discovered its real purpose a few weeks later, prompting him to admit he’d used the device “a couple of times” to record her in the shower but claimed all the videos had been deleted.
Police said after time the woman “accepted what had occurred” and “moved on” to make the relationship work.
However, she ended the marriage and kicked him out of the house in September 2016 after discovering the USB stick containing the sexually explicit videos of the pair, along with notes detailing their sexual encounters and other, unrelated pornographic material.
The man made full admissions to the illicit filming in an affidavit produced as part of their divorce proceedings.
The woman reported the matter to police in August 2017, leading to the man’s arrest.
In court on Friday, defence lawyer Robert Steward said his client was sorry for what he’d done and understood he needed professional help.
“He expressed contrition and remorse even before he knew he was going to be caught,” he said.
“He knows he needs ongoing help.”
Mr Steward also said a “rather nasty and far reaching” side effect of the man’s crimes was that he was now “being treated like a sex offender”, meaning he had restricted access to his children.
“He only sees them under supervision now,” he said.
Mr Steward urged the court to impose an intensive corrections order, which would allow the man to serve his sentence in the community.
However, Magistrate Peter Thompson said the significant breach of trust involved in the man’s crime meant full-time prison was the only appropriate punishment.
“He abused his position of trust...it was the trusting relationship in the family home that allowed him to have access to make these recordings,” he said.
Magistrate Thompson sentenced the man to eight months jail, with a non-parole period of four months.
The man immediately lodged a severity appeal against the sentence. He sought release on bail but it was denied.
The appeal will be heard in Wollongong District Court on November 11.