For the last eleven years Assistant District Attorney, Brooke M. Webster has prosecuted criminals in North Carolina. Now the 43-year-old is charged with illegally entering a university library and secretly peeping on a young female student.
The incident happened at prestigious Wake Forest University in Winston Salem. According to the university, “On April 20, a female student reported that a man was using a mirror under a desk in the library to look at her. Wake Forest University Police immediately responded to the scene, located the suspect in the library, issued a trespass warning to him, and escorted him from campus.”
Webber resigned from his job as a prosecutor after his boss tried to talk to him about the incident. He faces charges of misdemeanor secret peeping.
This sort of incident can cause trauma for the victim. Wake Forest is providing counseling to the student involved.
Just this week, at all-female Wellesley college in Massachusetts, a 38-year-old Level One sex offender was caught peeping into a dorm room. A student positively identified Tyler Jacquard, and he was arrested. Jacquard has several open cases and was on probation for lewd and lascivious behavior.
Peeping is a form of sexual perversion involving voyeurism. While cases do still occur on college campuses, “voyeurs can get their kicks more safely online these days. Internet pornography is rampant, and there is no shortage of websites devoted to exhibitionism and voyeurism, Dr. Evan S. Nelson, a sex offender treatment provider, told The Chester Observer.
“In today’s world, (a lot of) voyeurism has gone digital: hidden cameras in bathrooms, cameras on shoes to ‘up skirt’ women, software to remotely control the webcam of someone’s computer after it has been hacked, etc.,” Nelson says.
But peeping should not be taken lightly. Nelson says the actions can be a first step toward something much more dangerous.