Five-year fight for justice ends as voyeur escapes jail
Woman who was filmed naked unknowingly was forced to campaign to get CPS to prosecute culprit
A WOMAN who was filmed naked without her consent has hit out at her “appalling” five-year wait for justice, as the voyeur was finally sentenced.
Emily Hunt, 41, woke up in a hotel with no memory of the previous night next to a stranger, Christopher Killick, in May 2015.
Killick, 41, was arrested on suspicion of rape, but released due to lack of evidence. He admitted to police he had shot a clip of Ms Hunt while she was unconscious to “masturbate to later” without her consent.
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said that filming someone naked in a private room was not an offence if they had consented to being looked at naked, and they would not be charging him with voyeurism, which is a crime under the Sexual Offences Act 2003.
However, after Ms Hunt spent years campaigning for justice, the CPS made the decision to prosecute Killick following a crucial judgment on a separate case in the Court of Appeal, which ruled that non-consensual intimate filming was illegal.
Killick, of Brent, north-west London, was arrested for voyeurism in May but avoided prison at Stratford magistrates’ court in east London yesterday, after he was given credit for pleading guilty at the earliest opportunity.
District Judge Louisa Cieciora handed him a 30-month community order, which includes completing a programme which encourages perpetrators to develop victim empathy skills. He must also pay £2,180 in fines and court costs, and £5,000 in compensation to Ms Hunt.
An indefinite restraining order has also been put in place, banning him from contacting Ms Hunt, and his name will remain on the sex offenders register for five years. The judge told him: “The facts are shocking. As you said to the probation officer, you knew it was morally wrong and deceitful to record Ms Hunt without her consent.
“It was invasive and taken without the victim’s knowledge or awareness. You prioritised your own desires without thinking of the victim.
“Ms Hunt has concerns it will be seen as trivial and easily dismissed. It is anything but. It had a devastating impact on her.”
Ms Hunt said: “The recognition that this was a serious sexual offence, and the acknowledgement of the devastating impact it has had on my life, is the most important thing to me.
“It is appalling that it has taken five years of fighting to get to this point. I hope that in future no other victim of a sexual offence has to go through what I have experienced.”
Kate Ellis, from the Centre for Women’s Justice, said: “It was very hard for Ms Hunt today for him not to receive a custodial sentence.
“What we have is vindication for the conviction, but it still is not easy for her to know that this man is still out on the streets.”