Get legal advice about secret sex tapes
Q - Since summer, I’ve been visiting someone’s home and having sex with this person.
After approximately 100 visits, I noticed a surveillance camera in one corner facing the spot where the encounter usually occurs.
When asked, they jokingly said they’d recorded all our encounters, and then denied it.
While it was somewhat my own fault, I feel violated. What should I do?
Exposed
A - You have been violated, and left uncertain whether anyone’s viewed these potential sex tapes.
Unless your sex partner proves that she/he did not record your sex acts, you’ll remain rightfully untrusting, and frightened that whatever went on will be made public in some way.
Get legal advice, immediately. Secret sex tapes made without both parties’ knowledge and consent are illegal in many jurisdictions.
In New York State, the “unlawful surveillance” statute makes it illegal to secretly record or broadcast a person undressing or having sex when that person has a reasonable expectation of privacy.
It applies even if the sex acts were consensual.
In Canada, if a sexual picture/ video is taken, shared, or posted online without the permission of the person in the picture/ video, it’s a criminal offence.
Also, any misuse of the tape might fall under other crimes such as slander, extortion, making threats, etc.
A lawyer will explain the legal consequences to the person having secretly made this tape.
If you believe the tape does or even can exist, inform the police.
Stop seeing this person.
Q - I was age ten, in Grade Five. I’m 28 now and still remember every detail of what happened.
I lived in an apartment building with several entrances. I always walked home from school alone.
When I got inside the door of my area, a man stopped me, asking, “Are you in Grade Six?” He then mentioned the name of a girl I knew, so I stopped.
He kept talking and started touching me. He rubbed my behind over my clothes then patted me in the front of my pants, asking if I had hair “down there.”
I was frozen stiff with fear. He was a man, possibly mid-30s.
He then rubbed my chest over my coat. I blurted out, “I have to go,” then ran.
It upsets me when I think of it, which happens from time to time. It makes me feel dirty.
A Child’s #MeToo.
A - So sad, and not uncommon. It happens to boys and girls even younger than you, because there are nasty people - women as well as men - who think only of whatever impulse drives them.
They care nothing about the young person they’re harming mentally and emotionally for years ahead.
But a child can get past a bad incident if she/he speaks up right away and caring adults listen, believe, and stress that the blame belongs to the offender, not the victim.
But too often, the child s dmay be too scared to tell anyone, or has some sense of being the one who did something wrong.
Or, the young person fears that somehow the predator will find out and harm them in a worse way next time.
That’s why your speaking out even now, years later, is so important.
Hopefully such stories in this column will encourage other young people, plus parents and teachers, to recognize how prevalent sexual assault has been and still is.
Everyone involved with someone who’s been sexually assaulted needs to be supportive and wherever possible, report the incident so the perpetrator can be found and criminally charged.