Man who tried to record wife having affair guilty of voyeurism, B.C. judge rules

A suspicious husband who surreptitiously installed a hidden camera in the bedroom of his B.C. home – with the admitted intention of catching his wife being unfaithful – has been found guilty of voyeurism.

A suspicious husband who surreptitiously installed a hidden camera in the bedroom of his B.C. home – with the admitted intention of catching his wife being unfaithful – has been found guilty of voyeurism.

A publication ban protects the identities of both the husband and wife in the case.

The unusual criminal trial, which was heard in the Vancouver Island community of Courtenay following the couple’s acrimonious divorce, highlights a lesser-known aspect of Canada’s voyeurism laws – one that applies even when a victim is not watched or recorded for a sexual purpose.

Judge Alexander Wolf accepted that the husband’s motivation for secretly recording his wife was not sexual, and noted there was no evidence his camera, which was hidden in a clock radio, ever captured any infidelity.

In fact, only one video of the wife, recorded in July 2020, was presented as evidence. Though Wolf confirmed “for the sake of clarity” that the woman was alone in the recording, he described the exact contents of the video as “irrelevant.”

“It does not matter whether the complainant was clothed, sleeping or watching TV,” Wolf wrote in his Oct. 17 decision.

That’s because under section 162(1)(a) of the Criminal Code, a victim only has to be observed somewhere they can “reasonably be expected to be nude … or to be engaged in explicit sexual activity” for an offence to have occurred, the judge said.