WATCH: Former UBC professor James Rupert was sentenced today for secretly recording study participants changing their clothes. Rumina Daya explains what his sentence entails.
A former University of B.C. professor has been handed probation for secretly recording study participants in a change room last year.
James Rupert, who was an associate professor of kinesiology at UBC until June 2014, was charged a month later by RCMP. The 56-year-old was accused of filming UBC staff members in a makeshift change room over three months in 2014. The people involved were participants of a study on physical fitness.
In this morning’s decision, a judge has given him a suspended sentence of 15 months probation and 80 hours of community service. Rupert has also been ordered to have no contact with his victims, and not use recording devices. He offered to pay $1,100 in counselling costs for one of the study participants and has been ordered to get counselling himself.
At his sentencing hearing in Richmond on Tuesday Rupert said, “I’m very, very sorry and I am profoundly ashamed of my behaviour.”
Although Rupert accepted full responsibility for his actions, his lawyer Irina Ceric was asking for a conditional discharge; which would see the former professor avoid a criminal record. The Crown asked for a suspended sentence with probation.
Rupert confessed to secretly filming four women on seven different occasions between Jan. 14 and April 16, 2014 using a camera hidden in a tool box. The false tool box had three holes drilled into it and was labelled “old computer stuff.”
According to a statement by the university, Rupert was removed from his position six days after he was charged on June 20, 2014.
- BC Hydro offers free AC units to lower-income, vulnerable customers
- ‘It’s nice to be the villain’: Vancouver Canucks gear up for Game 3 in Nashville
- ‘Why aren’t we doing more?’ White Rock on edge with killer on the loose
- Joffre Lakes to close for 3 periods this year under agreement with First Nations
Comments