Students

Former University of Delaware Grad Student Charged With Secretly Recording 'Hundreds' of Women in Bathrooms

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After being arrested for nearly a month, state officials now say they enough evidence to prosecute a graduate student accused of secretly filming women in bathrooms at or near the University of Delaware (UD).

According to the News Journal, Javier Mendiola-Soto, a 38-year-old former doctoral candidate at UD, downloaded 1,500 different films recorded from a napkin dispenser. Skip Homiak, UD's executive director of campus and public safety, said the suspect filmed certain women more than once.

Though there are "hundreds" of victims, police were able to identify more than 40 women. Authorities told the newspaper they do not plan on reaching out to the women they identified in order to protect their identities.

Homiak said Mendiola-Soto was expelled from the school and, if sentenced, the most likely scenario for the former student will be deportation to Mexico, his home country. Authorities are holding the former UD doctoral candidate at the Young Correctional Institution in Wilmington on a $42,000 secured bond.

"We're hoping that, in fact, if they're needed to testify, they will," Homiak told the News Journal of the women identified in the recordings. "We do understand that they've been traumatized. Everything that we are doing at the university is with the utmost sensitivity to the victims. And that's our main concern at the moment."

Mendiola-Soto faced 21 felony counts relating to violation of privacy, the Associated Press reported. Authorities announced Friday that police had arrested him July 1.

Homiak told the News Journal the prosecution is asking that any woman who believed they were secretly filmed can come forward. He said any woman who wants to do so an provide a photo of herself and it will be compared to a digital image taken from the videos.

"Anybody who thinks they may have been a victim of this, they can call us on the hotline and speak with an investigator," Homiak said. "And if that person wishes, we can compare her known photo with an image that we have taken from the videos."

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