Images of the woman having sex were sent to her relatives in Pakistan, Winnipeg police allege. ‘My sense of safety, my sense of trust is all gone,’ says the Pakistani-Canadian woman who found video cameras hidden in her home. Police allege they were put there by her ex-husband, who is facing criminal charges.
WINNIPEG – A Pakistani-Canadian man who broke into her ex-wife’s house and installed cameras so he can record her every move, including her having sex, has been arrested and charged with various charges of violating her privacy.
The woman and her husband can’t be identified due to a court imposed publication ban. But the woman broke her silence to the CBC News, saying she thought when she left her abusive ex she would finally be safe but that illusion was shattered the day she discovered someone had broken into her Winnipeg home and installed hidden cameras in her bedroom and living area.
“For a few days, I just wanted to hide inside a cupboard and not come out. I felt so violated,” the woman said.
The woman discovered the first camera on a Friday afternoon last April, after spotting an electrical socket facing her bed she had never noticed before.
“I was like, ‘Something is off,'” she said. “Something is in that thing. So I tried taking it out, but I was so scared because I thought maybe it’s a bomb. I literally thought to myself: ‘He has planted a bomb and this house is going to explode. You’re all going to die.'”
The woman called police, who pulled a home surveillance camera out of the bedroom wall and soon discovered another camera with a view of the main living area of the home. They also found a USB cable dangling from a hole someone had crudely cut in the exterior stucco of the house, according to search warrant documents filed in Court of Queen’s Bench.
Winnipeg police quickly suspected the woman’s ex-husband might be involved. The woman had packed up the couple’s children and left him in 2016, after enduring what she describes as years of abuse that continued even after she ended the relationship.
The woman said she has called police at least 20 times over the past two years to report concerning behaviour by her ex-husband. “I haven’t felt safe in years,” she told CBC News in an interview.
Police obtained a search warrant in April for the ex-husband’s Winnipeg home to look for packaging from the cameras and blue tuck tape identical to what was used to install the cameras in the woman’s house. In court documents, police allege they found a fingerprint matching her ex-husband on the tape holding camera wires in place.
I can’t sleep at night, knowing my videos are outside in the world.
Around the same time, the woman said she started getting frantic calls and messages from her family in the U.S. and her native Pakistan.
“They told me that his family in Pakistan has called my mom,” she said. “And they’re saying to her that they have videos of me having sex with a white man. And if I don’t go to the [Winnipeg] police station to tell police that the cameras are a prank, they’re going to release those videos on social media.”
Her ex’s family also went a step further, she said. “They tell my mom the positions that I’ve had sex, who I’ve had sex with, where was I on my birthday weekend — [that] I should be stoned to death for committing adultery,” she said.
The woman said she immediately contacted the police once more.
Her ex-husband was arrested on April 15. He is currently in jail awaiting trial on six charges, including break and enter, voyeurism, and distributing intimate images without consent.
Through his lawyer, he declined comment.
The allegations have not been proven in court. A trial date is set for February 2019.
Courtesy CBC News Manitoba
