Jury awards $22,500 to ex-Penn State students who said roommate recorded their sex acts

A Centre County couple who sued their former roommate over allegations he surreptitiously recorded them engaging in sexual conduct walked away Thursday having won $22,500.

A jury handed down its decision after about two hours of deliberation at the federal courthouse in Lycoming County, attorney John Bee wrote in a text message.

The trio of former Penn State students began sharing a Ferguson Township apartment with separate private bedrooms in August 2017.

Nils Knutrud gave his roommates a Blu-Ray DVD player, ostensibly as a Christmas gift. He installed the device unprompted and aimed it at their bed, Bee wrote in the lawsuit. Knutrud’s roommates became suspicious and found a hidden camera, microphone and storage device were installed inside the DVD player.

Knutrud, of Massachusetts, frequently borrowed the DVD player to “periodically review” the videos, images and audio it captured, Chief U.S. Middle District Judge Matthew Brann wrote.

Ferguson Township police found dozens of videos or images that showed Knutrud’s roommates in various states of undress or engaging in sex acts between February and May 2018.

Knutrud’s participation in the lawsuit over the past two years was at best inconsistent.

His silence, Brann wrote, meant he has not “raised any kind of dispute whatsoever.”

The allegations also gave rise to criminal charges in Centre County. Knutrud, 31, pleaded guilty in March to one felony count of intercepting communications. He was sentenced by Centre County President Judge Pamela Ruest to two years of probation.