Inside the mind of a voyeur predator, in the midst of Bali’s shocking hidden toilet camera scandal

Forensic experts have given a disturbing insight into the mind of a predatory voyeur, amid the fallout from Bali’s toilet hidden camera scandal.

Experts have given a stark and disturbing insight into the mind of a predatory sexual voyeur, amid the fallout of shock revelations that a prolific pervert is lurking in the toilets of two of Bali’s most popular clubs.

On Thursday, news.com.au exposed details of the staggering operation of an anonymous man who has amassed several thousand photos and videos of unsuspecting victims, which he sells online.

The predator has spent several months working the male bathrooms of FINNS Beach Club and Old Man’s bar in Canggu – both extremely popular hotspots among Australian tourists.

Indeed, many of the unsuspecting victims who’ve been violated are Aussies, including at least two professional footballers.

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Hundreds, if not thousands of men – including many Australians – have been victimised by the serial predator, who sells explicit images online.

Lars Madsen is a leading forensic psychologist with two decades’ experience and practices at the Clinical Psychology Centre in Brisbane, with a particular expertise in the assessment and treatment of sexual and violent offending.

Dr Madsen described the extent of the Bali pervert’s offending as “extreme”.

“His ease of access and the opportunity to create this kind of stuff is staggering,” Dr Madsen said. “There seems to be a preoccupation with collecting this material. He’s obviously chronically sexually preoccupied. It’s likely he can’t stop thinking about it.

“The level or organisation and the obsession with collecting and collating this stuff is interesting. He seems very focused on the operation – it’s likely become an important part of his voyeurism, as well as the sexual gratification.”

Dr Madsen also suspects the individual “enjoys the element of reward” from selling thousands of images and videos to paying subscribers.

“He gets more from this than just the voyeuristic fantasy. There’s financial reward. There’s a fanbase.”

The man delivers daily updates to paying subscribers across almost a dozen channels.

The Bali predator manages a dozen private channels for paying subscribers, categorised by themes – beach club patrons, nightclub patrons, men who are defecating, and “straight bait” – or unwitting social media users who have been catfished and tricked into sending nude photos and videos.

Those channels collectively contain more than 8300 images and videos.

“There’s a subtype of voyeurism called ‘coprophilia’, which involves viewing people while they go to the toilet,” Dr Madsen said. “It’s a particular genre, if you like.”

Voyeurism isn’t a victimless crime

Criminal experts say behaviour like his can be far from harmless.

Research conducted by psychologists Victoria Lister and Theresa Gannon from the University of Kent in the UK and published earlier this year probed the behaviours of 22 men convicted of voyeuristic offences, with startling findings.

They found all but one had previous convictions for various other serious crimes, including sexual assault, child sexual abuse, and rape.

“There were seven participants who stated that they had a sexual interest in children or adolescents, and nine who had convictions for sexual assault of a child,” Dr Lister and Dr Gannon wrote.

Three of the men also had previous convictions for possessing extreme pornography – all of which involved animals.

FINNS Beach Club is one of Bali's most popular venues – particularly among Australian tourists.

Old Man's is another extremely popular haunt among Aussie tourists.

Dr Madsen has encountered a number of offenders who’ve engaged in voyeurism and said they typically fall into two camps.

“The first is where men develop an interest in voyeurism and it remains consistent, while the other sees their fantasies evolve and escalate,” he explained.

“In the latter, there’s the guy who has a conviction for contact sexual offence, like rape, and when talking with them, they’ll report having engaged in voyeuristic behaviours in adolescence.

“They tend to have grown up in troubled environments where they perhaps experienced a lot of physical, emotional and maybe even sexual abuse … and somewhere along the line they’ve developed this interest. It’s almost like a coping strategy.”

He recalled an individual who began spying on his sister while she showered and went to the toilet when he was a child – every now and then at first, and eventually obsessively.

“It became so compelling for him. But apart from it being sexually stimulating for him, it gave him a real sense of power and control.

“When we looked at his life, he had no power and control. Voyeurism became a substitute for all of the ways in which he was lacking.”

Offending of this nature tends to escalate, experts say.

As he became an adolescent, his voyeurism evolved into sneaking around the neighbourhood at night to peer in people’s windows, again for sexual gratification, but importantly to feel a sense of power.

“Later on, that individual’s fantasies shifted towards being more violent – taking people, coercing people, raping them, that kind of stuff. That shift seemed to occur with a situation where he was very unsuccessful finding romantic partners, and he became resentful and angry.

“His sexual fantasies during voyeuristic moments became about raping and hurting women and getting back at them. Eventually, he sexually assaulted a woman who was walking home alone from a nightclub one evening.”

That kind of chilling trajectory from incidental voyeurism to escalated offending, through to violent fantasies and then a serious assault or rape is not uncommon.

“It’s seen with a lot of men charged with rape and sexual assaults,” he said.

A number of Aussie cases

In October, Melbourne real estate agent Joshua Allison was jailed for secretly recording women inside their homes, and during the court case it emerged his activities stretched back more than a decade.

In total, 11 women were known to have been targeted, including his female housemates who were recorded with a hidden camera in their bathroom.

“I was completely freaked out,” one of his victims told the court. “I just can’t fathom how someone could get enjoyment from doing that to young people.”

The woman said her innocence had been stripped away by the offending.

Allison was only stopped at long last when a supermarket manager caught him trying to film up the skirts of two female children and notified police.

He was sentenced to four years and 10 months in jail and will be a registered sex offender for the rest of his life.

Joshua Allison was jailed for his serial offending.

Another major bust came in 2014 when a 61-year-old man was jailed for installing hidden cameras in a Geelong cafe’s toilet and compiling thousands of images and videos of countless victims – including children, some of them as young as three.

Roger Hall was a customer of the business and meticulously collected and categorised graphic content from three concealed devices.

He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 15 months’ imprisonment, suspended after six months.

Neither Hall nor Allison was accused of physically offending against any of the people they filmed.

Roger Hall was jailed for fitting a cafe toilet with three hidden cameras.

Historically, voyeuristic crimes tended to be viewed as ‘nuisances’ but a growing body of research indicates there are very real damages inflicted on victims.

Many jurisdictions across the world have criminalised non-consensual voyeurism, but it seems some in the community fail to see the harms.

Criminal researcher Chelsea Gold from the City University of New York explored the perceptions of what are known as non-contact sexual offences in a thesis published in 2017.

Ms Gold’s study found members of the public are more likely to view a non-contact offence a crime if the victim is female than if the person violated is male.

“This could be because offenders see young females as timid and less likely to retaliate,” she said.

Most perpetrators of these crimes are male, regardless of the gender of their victims.

A study conducted in the early 2000s found those who report voyeuristic tendencies were more likely to have some kind of diagnosable mental illness or personality disorder.

“They also found support for a link between risk-taking behaviours, as well as sexual risk taking,” Ms Gold said of that research in her published thesis.

News.com.au’s investigation has now sparked a police probe in Indonesia, assisted by Australian authorities.

“The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Australian Federal Police are liaising closely with Indonesian authorities regarding this matter,” a DFAT spokesperson said.

“DFAT stands ready to provide consular assistance if required.”

The AFP confirmed it had referred the matter to police in Indonesia but could not comment further due to an ongoing investigation.

Indonesian authorities have not responded to multiple requests for comment, nor have tourism officials in Bali. Both venues at the centre of the scandal also remain silent.

A spokesperson for Australia’s eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said the sharing of intimate visual content without the consent of the person depicted constituted image-based abuse.

“It includes pictures or videos where someone is naked or partly naked or involved in a private activity, such as using the toilet or showering,” the spokesperson said.

“The eSafety Commissioner can help if a person is the victim of image-based abuse and we encourage Australians experiencing it to report it to eSafety.gov.au/report.   

“As part of our powers, we can require platforms to remove this content when it is reported to us by the person targeted or someone authorised to make a report on their behalf.

“If you have been targeted, please don’t go through this alone but seek support from people you trust or from a 24/7 support service, like Lifeline or Beyond Blue.”