Man admits hiding cameras in women's bathrooms

WILMINGTON – A former University of Delaware graduate student admitted Tuesday to hiding cameras in women's bathrooms around the school and Newark to secretly record females using the facilities.

Javier Mendiola-Soto, 39, pleaded guilty to 49 counts of felony invasion of privacy, which each carry a sentence of up to two years in prison. This means Mendiola-Soto could face up to 98 years in prison at sentencing, but as part of the plea agreement, Deputy Attorney General Martin O'Connor has agreed to ask for no more than seven years in prison.

Mendiola-Soto is a Mexican citizen who was in Delaware and at the University of Delaware on a student visa. It is expected that when he completes whatever sentence is imposed, he will be deported to Mexico.

While guidelines call for a sentence of probation, Superior Court Judge Fred S. Silverman told Mendiola-Soto not to expect that at sentencing in March because of the sheer number of charges involved.

Each of the 49 counts relates to a specific woman whose privacy Mendiola-Soto invaded with his cameras, and O'Connor said there were many other victims who were not ultimately identified. In all, investigators recovered more than 1,500 videos of women using bathrooms in and around UD; most were believed to have been filmed between May 2012 and June 2014.

Some victims were filmed on dozens of occasions.

O'Connor said that Mendiola-Soto hid cameras in at least 10 locations around the university and in Newark, including at the Hugh Morris Library, Memorial Hall, the Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Laboratory, Willard Hall Education Building and the Delaware Biotechnology Institute in the Delaware Technology Park, where Mendiola-Soto worked as a researcher and where a woman first discovered a hidden camera on June 27.

According to court papers, he also hid cameras in the bathroom at the Goodwill and at his residence in Newark, where he lived with several female roommates.

Mendiola-Soto appeared in court Tuesday, dressed in a white prison uniform, to enter his guilty pleas and was allowed to remain seated during the brief proceeding due to the fact that he has prosthetic legs. According to attorneys, Mendiola-Soto lost his legs in a train accident in Mexico when he was younger.

During the proceeding, he answered yes-or-no questions from the judge and did not make any statements about what he had done or why.

Outside court, Mendiola-Soto's attorney T. Andrew Rosen said that his client was "a shy nerd" who had difficulty meeting women due to both his disability and the fact he was a foreigner. "He was completely isolated, socially," Rosen said, adding that his client unfortunately turned to secret cameras as a way of connecting with women.

Both Rosen and investigators said Mendiola-Soto took the videos for his own use, and there was no evidence that he published or shared any of the videos online.

In his brief appearance before the judge Tuesday, Mendiola-Soto said at the time of his arrest, he working on two Ph.D. degrees.

Shortly after his arrest, Mendiola-Soto, who was listed as an author of a 2012 research article about the reproductive cycle of flowering plants, was expelled from UD.

His secret videotaping was exposed when a woman who went to get a tampon from a dispenser in a UD bathroom noticed a camera inside and took it to authorities. Very quickly, Mendiola-Soto, who had been seen lingering by women's restrooms in the past, was identified as a suspect and questioned. When confronted, Mendiola-Soto admitted he was responsible and cooperated with investigators, Rosen said.

Judge Silverman, who complimented the University of Delaware Police on their thorough investigation, ordered a pre-sentence investigation and set Mendiola-Soto's sentencing for March 27. O'Connor told Silverman that prosecutors anticipate that a number of the victims may want to attend the sentencing, where they will have an opportunity to speak.

In addition to likely jail time and near-certain deportation, Mendiola-Soto also will have to register as a tier 2 sex offender under the terms of the plea deal.

Contact Sean O'Sullivan at (302) 324-2777 or sosullivan@delawareonline.com or on Twitter @SeanGOSullivan