ROYAL NAVY OFFICER PAUL OPIE SENTENCED IN PLYMOUTH FOR VOYEURISM AND CHILD PORNOGRAPHY
In January 2009, Paul Opie, a 36-year-old Royal Navy petty officer, was jailed for two years after admitting to several serious offenses at the HMS Drake naval base in Plymouth.Opie secretly filmed his female shipmates showering and changing by cutting holes in the ceiling and walls of the ship’s changing rooms.
He used his engineering skills and knowledge of the building to find a void inside a wall of the ablution block, where he filmed multiple clips over a period of six months.
The footage included short videos of female sailors in various stages of undress in the shower block on the quayside.
He was caught when he accidentally filmed his own face while aiming his camera downwards through a hole in the ceiling at a naked female sailor.
The court heard that he used his mobile phone to take these videos and stored them on his device.
Judge Francis Gilbert, QC, addressed Opie directly, stating: “You placed a mobile phone in a toilet block so you could secretly film a female Royal Navy colleague changing her uniform.
You then made six more video files using a void space you discovered, which allowed you to film secretly as female colleagues dressed and undressed in the changing room.
They are now aware of what you did, and each of them was filmed in private moments, with their private parts captured and transferred to your laptop for your own pleasure.
The distress and outrage caused to your victims is both obvious and understandable.” The prosecution, led by Mr.
Andrew Maitland, revealed that the police discovered the images during an investigation into a separate child pornography case.
The images included 56 child abuse pictures, one of which depicted a naked young girl tied up and threatened with a weapon by a slightly older girl, also naked.
Police found the child abuse images on Opie’s computer after executing a search, and the footage from the NSRC in Devonport’s number ten dock was traced back to his device.
One of the clips was taken through the ceiling, with his face visible, indicating the record of his own positioning during the crimes.
Nick Lewin, defending, stated that Opie had already lost much—his family, career, and pension.
He added, “Clearly, the photographs were for his own sexual gratification.
He cannot understand how he found excuses for his behaviour which he knows to have been desperately wrong.” Following his conviction, Opie was removed from the Navy after an 18-year career and was sentenced to two years in prison.
