Tanning voyeur guilty. Given 1-year conditional discharge.

[Editor-in-Chief]

April 6, 2007

Tanning voyeur guilty

Given 1-year conditional discharge

By DEAN PRITCHARD, SUN MEDIA

People at a tanning salon have the same right to privacy as they would in a hotel room, said a judge yesterday before granting a one-year conditional discharge to a man who used his cellphone to take a picture of a 17-year-old girl as she emerged naked from a tanning bed.

Alexsander Krstic, 32, was arrested in April 2005 and charged with mischief after two women reported seeing him take pictures of them from the top of a partition wall as they exited a tanning bed in what they thought was a private room.

Krstic -- the former owner and sole employee of the Euro Tanning Salon -- didn't deny taking the pictures but argued yesterday his actions did not constitute mischief under the Criminal Code.

MISCHIEF

Six months after Krstic's arrest, Parliament passed a voyeurism law prohibiting "surreptitiously observing or making a visual recording of a person in circumstances that gives rise to a reasonable expectation of privacy."

Krstic's actions were "clearly a violation of the Privacy Act ... but he's not charged with invasion of privacy, he's charged with mischief," said Krstic's lawyer David Guttman.

"The mischief section deals with interference with the enjoyment of one's own property."

Judge John Guy said Krstic could have been justifiably charged with either offence.

'HORRIFIED'

"If I am going to a tanning salon, whether I strip down totally nude or I'm in my bathing suit, I pay to get into that room, therefore I am lawfully in possession of it," he said. "I am in there and I expect to enjoy my tanning and I expect not to be interfered with, just like if I rented a hotel room."

Court heard Krstic immediately deleted the pictures when his actions were discovered and told police he was "horrified" at his behaviour, which he couldn't explain.

Krstic's girlfriend broke off their engagement following his arrest and the salon remained closed until it was sold several months later to a new owner.

"It was inexplicable behaviour and obviously costly from a personal point of view," Guy said.


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