The report indicates that Stephen John Earl pleaded guilty in Magistrates Court in Hobart "to one count of observing, or recording, in breach of privacy".
Earl was reportedly caught by his wife watching her undress in their bathroom and was seen peering from a water tank outside the bathroom window. "She had confronted him and discussed her right to privacy." She subsequently found a hole, hidden behind a picture that allowed him to watch her in the bathroom.
Earl admitted he had videotaped his wife. In court he indicated that " the marriage failed spectacularly after she found the spy hole".
The ABC states that
Chief Magistrate Michael Hill said he had never come across a case like it.
He did not record a conviction on the condition Earl was of good behaviour for two years.Section 13A of the Police Offences Act 1935 (Tas) deals with "Observation or recording in breach of privacy" as follows
(1) A person who observes or visually records another person, in circumstances where a reasonable person would expect to be afforded privacy –
(a) without the other person's consent; and
(b) when the other person – (i) is in a private place; or (ii) is engaging in a private act and the observation or visual recording is made for the purpose of observing or visually recording a private act
– is guilty of an offence.
Penalty: Fine not exceeding 50 penalty units or imprisonment for a term not exceeding 12 months, or both.
(2) A person who observes or visually records another person's genital or anal region, in circumstances where a reasonable person would expect to be afforded privacy in relation to that region –
(a) without the other person's consent; and
(b) when the observation or visual recording is made for the purpose of observing or visually recording the other person's genital or anal region
– is guilty of an offence.
Penalty: Fine not exceeding 50 penalty units or imprisonment for a term not exceeding 12 months, or both.Section 14A ("Peering into dwelling-houses, etc" under "Offences relating to trespass to lands") - a restatement of the traditional 'peeping & prying' offence - provides that
(1) A person shall not without lawful excuse (proof whereof shall lie on him) –
(a) peep or peer into the window or door of a dwelling-house; or
(b) lurk, loiter, or secrete himself on any land within the curtilage of a dwelling-house.
(2) A person who contravenes a provision of subsection (1) is guilty of an offence and is liable on summary conviction to a penalty not exceeding 5 penalty units or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 6 months.In the Old Testament the virtue of the surveilled women is affirmed by God and several of the peepers come to an unpleasant end. The impious youth who improperly glanced at Lady Godiva was supposedly punished with exemplary blindness, as I noted in a paper last year for the Newcastle Law Society about the proposed Australian privacy tort. In the Tasmanian incident the real punishment of Mr Earl, apart from the ending of his marriage, is presumably the glances of his neighbours and associates after reading the ABC report and other coverage in the mass media. Shaming can be particularly painful.
