How ‘normal’ men are secretly filming their wives with spy-cams hidden in air-fresheners & plugs and sharing vids online

FORMER glamour model turned TV presenter, Jess Davies, knows all about being betrayed by boyfriends, who have shared her most intimate pictures on social media with friends. Now, in the TV documentary Hunting the Spycammers, she uncovers a dark online network in which hidden cameras, disguised as everyday objects such as pens, car keys and air fresheners, are placed in bedrooms, bathrooms and changing rooms across the country, capturing private footage that is liked and shared. TV presenter Jess Davies stars in a documentary, Hunting the Spycammers, exploring the dark world of voyeur crime Credit: Instagram Jess discovered the everyday items, like keychains and car keys, that can have hidden cameras Credit: BBC Such is the growing community of voyeur pervs that they boldly share tips online about the best places to put their cameras to get explicit images. Astonishingly, the most popular are those where men share such material of their wives and girlfriends. Sign up for The Sun newsletter Thank you! Scarily, a man using the nickname of UKperv, who runs a voyeur group on Telegram, posts a message that says: “I’ve taken things to a whole new level this week and given a complete stranger access to our bedroom CCTV feed to spy on my wife whenever he wishes. “Conditions are that he sends me a recording of what he catches. Amazon sells car keys that have tiny cameras in them Credit: Amazon On the documentary, Jess manages to talk to one victim about her unsettling experience at a restaurant a couple of years ago Credit: BBC “It makes me so hard thinking that some random person is viewing my wife in the privacy of her own home, without her having a clue about it.” Another man boasts of placing spycams on a walking route where he regularly captures footage of women stopping for a pee. And a woman tells Jess about a camera she found under a restaurant toilet seat. Jess tells the Sun: “The extent of voyeurism in this country really surprised me. Most read in The Sun “I’ve experienced image abuse quite a few times over the years, and I’m very kind of active in these spaces, but the fact that we were seeing this on such a big scale really shocked me. “And just how blasé and open people were about it. I wasn’t accessing the dark web. It was very public, in a sense. “I think the development of tech has a role in the increase in voyeurism. “You can buy hidden cameras so easily on very accessible sites like the ones we bought from eBay, TikTok shop and Amazon. “They were all very cheap, under £50 and almost impossible to spot. “I typed in ‘hidden camera’ on Google and loads came up, disguised as air fresheners and pocket pens for less than eight quid.” Amongst those she buys are a phone charger for £39.99, a water bottle for £30.99, a car key for £39.99, a clothes hook for £34.99 and a Bluetooth speaker for £44.99. She adds: “The water bottle had a tiny hidden camera lens in the top that you could leave in a changing room or bedside table. “I was actually able to charge my phone on the one hidden in the phone charger. “Similarly, a Bluetooth speaker version worked. You could connect your phone to it and play music. “The hidden cameras were everyday items you would see in people’s homes, or say, rented accommodation, holiday cottages, and you would never think of checking them. “But to think now that all those things could actually have hidden cameras in them is terrifying.” To get inside the world of spycammers, Jess teams up with investigative journalist Liam Connell, where they pose as fellow pervs on a site called Amateur Voyeur Forum, which has almost half a million members. Popular threads on here include – party girls, drunk girls, changing rooms and girls caught peeing. Former glamour model Jess has experienced image abuse quite a few times over the years Credit: @_jessdavies This clothes hook also has a mini spycam hidden inside Credit: Not known, clear with picture desk “It feels like these women are being hunted down and preyed upon,” says Jess. “There are a lot of links to Telegram, where the voyeurs can chat and share their videos.” Jess manages to talk to one victim about her unsettling experience at a restaurant a couple of years ago. “I was with my partner, and I went to the toilet, and I saw a little black dot looking up at me on the hinge of the toilet seat,” she says. “I lifted the lid, and there was a camera taped to it underneath with cables attached to a battery pack. “My heart was racing, I felt sick, violated. Somebody is watching you at that point. The police, later on, said it was a live feed. “And I think that was the reason why they had no evidence. They can’t just take the SIM card out. “There’s no way of tracing it. You just think, ‘Who’s watching it? How many people have seen it?” Jess was able to source numerous hidden camera objects after a few clicks on the internet Credit: BBC Amateur Voyeur Forum has almost half a million members Credit: Getty Jess says: “The perfect thing about not having a SIM card in such cameras is that you don’t even have to return to the scene of the crime to retrieve it. “It wasn’t until we were in the AVF forum and seeing all the threads like ‘sleeping wife exposed,’ that it really triggered that memory of what happened to me because I hadn’t at the time put it down as something like voyeurism. “I hadn’t connected it with that word. “But when I saw that, I thought, ‘Oh, that’s what happened to me.’ “And it made me wonder where that image had ended up. “The person who shared it with me shared it with their friends, but I don’t know who they were and where it went outwardly from there.” Jess was just 15 when she was first betrayed by a boy she fancied who posted a picture of her in her underwear to his friends. She had naively exchanged photos with him and was horrified when at school, in art class, her phone started pinging with messages from older boys saying things like, “Nice pictures,” and “I didn’t think you were that type of girl.” What is voyeurism and what does the law say about the crime? VOYEURISM is the practice of getting sexual pleasure from watching others when they are naked or are engaged in sexual activity. It also involves getting enjoyment from seeing the pain or distress of others. The crime falls until Section 67 of the Sexual Offences Act of 2003. There are four subsections under voyeurism: Getting sexual pleasure while watching another person doing a private act and they have not consented Operating equipment with the intention of having them or someone else watching for sexual gratification from an unconsenting person doing a private act Recording an unconsenting person doing a private act and does with intention of them or someone else getting sexual gratification Installing equipment, or constructs or adapts a structure or part of a structure with the intention to watching an unconsenting person doing a private act for sexual gratification Voyeurism falls until Section 67 of the Sexual Offences Act of 2003 Credit: Getty Jess, who grew up in the seaside town of Aberystwyth in West Wales, says: “The images were shared around my school and my hometown without my consent, and that was the first experience I had of being violated in that way. “It’s a small town, so people knew who I was and knew I was underage, but still my images were being seen by people in their 20s and 30s.” News eventually reached her grandmother, who told her parents. She says: “Imagine being 15, and your parents pull you aside and talk to you about it. It’s so extremely embarrassing at that age. Also, you don’t know what to do.” Her parents were understanding and supportive, but others were more judgmental. She says: “I remember being at school, and people would say stuff in the corridor, whether it was joking and making light of it or calling me names. “And people would just come up to me and show it. “So much shame is put on the victim. They don’t ask why someone would share that without my consent or why adult men are passing it around. “Even when I used to work at a local pub, five years later, the men, now grown up, would come and show me these images of me as a child that they still had on their phone as something that they would kind of boast about.” When she was 18, Jess began a glamour modelling career and was popular in “lads mags” such as Nuts. She says it was an attempt to “reclaim a bit of power back”. Jess explains: “It’s like, ‘You’ve all seen my images, you all have this idea of me, so why not make some money out of this?”. “I have had so many comments over the years, like, ‘How can you be upset about your pictures being shared when you chose to do topless photo shoots?’ But the keyword here is consent.” She was again betrayed by a boyfriend when she was 20. “I had just split up from a long-term boyfriend, so I was feeling a bit vulnerable, and it felt lovely when I found this new guy,” she says. One morning after staying over at his, she woke with a weird sense that something was not right. While he was in the shower, she decided to check his phone. She says: “I had never checked anyone’s phone before, but immediately, the first message that came up when I looked was a photo of me, asleep naked in his bed, with the covers pulled off me. It was in a group chat. “I just kind of froze and couldn’t believe what I was seeing – that someone I cared about could do that to me. “I didn’t confront him at the time because I was just so ashamed and embarrassed.” She quickly deleted the image from his phone, knowing those who had received it may have already saved it and forwarded it on. Jess says: “I wish I could say that I ended the relationship straight away, but I didn’t. My self-esteem was on the floor.” It was only while studying sociology at university that she began really questioning her experiences. She says: “I had this sense of anger. I just felt it wasn’t fair that women were being treated this way and losing total control over their images online. “I realised there was something here that we can fight for and try and change things, which is what I’ve been doing ever since.” Jess went on to write a book inspired by her experiences – No One Wants To See Your D*ck: A Handbook for Survival in the Digital World, that looks into sexual harassment, cyber-flashing and catfishing. Her 2022 BBC documentary Deepfake Porn: Could You Be Next? was used to lobby the UK government to criminalise sexually explicit deepfakes in the Online Safety Act. In Hunting the Spycammers, she found that the popularity of voyeurism was not limited to the classic image of the dirty old man. “Forty per cent of people coming to the site are 18 to 34 years old,” she says. “So, this isn’t just dirty old men. “And there are over 6,000 visitors a month who seem to be from the UK. “It started 17 years ago with just 36 members, and each year it has grown, and the traffic keeps increasing.” On AVF UKPerv calls himself Pervbro. His profile reads: “We have a CCTV camera in our house to keep an eye on the dog when we are out. I use them for other reasons that the wife doesn’t know about. “Let me know what you think and if you want more.” “It’s just lots of footage of this woman in bed and walking around in her own home. Some of her asleep,” says Jess. “It all feels very invasive and violating.” In UKPerv’s Telegram group, someone called Charlie posts videos of women peeing on a walking route in the countryside where he has hidden cameras in various bushes. The owner of AVF turns out to be from the Czech Republic. He refuses to be interviewed face-to-face or via phone but does agree to an email interview with Jess. At first, he is defensive about AVF and talks about men’s rights being eroded and insists that if he thinks content is not consensual, then he removes it. He also criticises the United Kingdom Safety Act 2023, which makes visual age identification compulsory for UK residents to access pornography sites, saying, “It is humiliating for the men who visit adult sites.” “It’s unbelievable for him to say it is humiliating for me,” says Jess. “‘Imagine how humiliating it is to be filmed peeing without your consent. But the AVF owner’s brazen words prove to be just a front because, to Jess’s delight, she reads a message from him on his site to all users, saying, “We have stopped accepting any kind of voyeur content produced.” Jess wrote to Telegram about what she had discovered. They replied: “While identifying non-consensual pornography is a problem for all public platforms, Telegram’s moderators routinely remove non-consensual pornography whenever identified.” “We essentially shut them down, which feels like such a big win,” says Jess. “But I’m not going to kid myself that this is the end of voyeurism. “There are more and more spaces where it happens. When one group is shut down, another is set up. “So, I think for me it’s about pushing these spaces into the darker corners of the internet. “So, if you do have to jump through all these VPNs to access it, if you do have to keep getting invited by an inside community to get involved, at that point, you kind of know that you’re probably doing something wrong that you shouldn’t be doing. Just making it that little bit more difficult to access these sites is still a victory.” Hunting the Spycammers BBCiplayer and YouTube Comment now