Victim tells of agony after her five-year campaign for justice
Voyeur who filmed naked woman as she slept is spared jail
A WOMAN who waged a five-year battle for justice after being filmed sleeping naked by a stranger hit out at the ‘appalling’ Crown Prosecution Service yesterday after the voyeur walked free from court.
Emily Hunt, 41, woke up naked in a five-star London hotel room next to a man she believed had drugged and attacked her before filming her while she slept in May 2015.
Christopher Killick, 40, was initially arrested on suspicion of rape but he was later released due to lack of evidence and the case was dropped.
Since then Miss Hunt, a strategy consultant, has valiantly fought for justice. And yesterday Killick was sentenced for voyeurism after finally admitting last month that he filmed Miss Hunt naked for 62 seconds for his self-gratification.
But in a bitter blow, he was spared jail and instead handed a 30-month community punishment. Miss Hunt, originally from New York, told of her despair, saying: ‘The CPS behaved in an appalling manner.
‘Clearly somebody made a decision early on that I was not a worthy or a righteous victim.’ She told BBC Radio 4’s World at One: ‘I’ve not had an apology from the CPS for this. We deserve a prosecution service that believes violent criminals belong in jail.’
On May 10, 2015, Miss Hunt, a mother of one, met her father for lunch at a restaurant in east London. What happened next still remains unclear but at around 10pm, five hours after she had parted with her father, she woke up next to Killick in a £300-a-night hotel with no idea how she had got there. Convinced she must have been drugged and raped, she texted a friend who called the police.
Killick was arrested with a rucksack containing condoms, Viagra and what was thought to be LSD. Police also found used condoms in the room. But officers did not carry out an internal examination on Miss Hunt for days and when the results did come back, they were inconclusive.
Miss Hunt then filed a separate police report in the hope he would be arrested for voyeurism – defined as observing or recording an individual doing a private act for sexual gratification without consent. But the CPS said filming someone naked did not constitute an offence if they had consented to being looked at naked.
Miss Hunt fought for a review of the case which led to a landmark ruling in January that non-consensual filming was illegal and prosecutors arrested Killick in May.
Yesterday she told Stratford Magistrates’ Court: ‘That evening changed my life. I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. Some time later, I went back to that hotel room and attempted suicide.’
Seona White, defending, said Killick admitted meeting Miss Hunt at a bar before going to the hotel where sexual activity took place and he volunteered the video.
She said: ‘He didn’t know it was illegal [to video her]. He deeply regrets it.’
Yesterday District Judge Louisa Cieciora said had he not pleaded guilty at the earliest opportunity he would have been jailed.
Killick was put on the sexual offenders register for five years and told to pay £2,180 in court costs and £5,000 to his victim. The judge told him: ‘The facts are shocking. You prioritised your own desires without thinking of the victim.’
The CPS described the case as ‘a complex area of law’ but after an Appeal Court ruling, it had ‘authorised a charge of voyeurism’.
‘Decided I was not a worthy victim’