Cops: UD grad student filmed women in bathrooms

A University of Delaware doctoral candidate from Mexico has been charged with hiding cameras in women's restrooms on- and off-campus for more than two years, possibly filming hundreds of women, officials said Friday.

Javier Mendiola-Soto, 38 – whose student visa has been revoked – is being held without bail on a federal detainer at Young Correctional Institution in Wilmington. A preliminary hearing is set for Aug. 1.

Although authorities said they found no evidence he shared his illicit videos or posted them on the Internet, UD President Patrick Harker called the crime "extremely disturbing."

His scheme was discovered after a UD employee found a camera hidden in a tampon dispenser on June 27, according to court documents.

"I think it's awful," rising UD junior Meredith Bonney of Wilmington said Friday night. "I don't know how he could install them. It's just absurd.... It's sick, definitely."

Police say they seized about 1,500 video files, and estimate victims could number in the hundreds.

Mendiola-Soto, a grad student at the Delaware Biotechnology Institute, was identified, arrested and charged with one count of felony invasion of privacy July 1, according to court documents.

Twenty more such counts were filed against him Thursday, UD spokeswoman Donna O'Brien said Friday, when the university announced his arrest.

UD officials would not say where he lived in Newark or in Mexico.

The university said in a statement that it did not disclose the arrest until Friday "because it could not be done before the identification of complaining witnesses and the provision of notification to those witnesses, which required time-consuming forensic work." Earlier public announcement "could not have been made before now without running the risk of jeopardizing an ongoing criminal prosecution."

The university is cooperating with the state Office of the Attorney General in the ongoing investigation "with urgency and a deep respect for the privacy of the victims," Harker said in a statement Friday.

Security sweeps were conducted of all campus restrooms and changing rooms, with campus patrols also increased, Harker said.

Mediola-Soto began planting small cameras in restrooms in May 2012, with his last known recording on June 28, the day after the employee called UD police after finding the first one in a first-floor women's room at the Delaware Biotechnology Institute on Innovation Way, court documents say.

Police later determined he was "using two cameras, downloading the images and moving them to other locations," said Skip Homiak, UD executive director of campus and public safety.

Police subsequently found his cameras in the first-floor women's restroom in the common area of the Hugh Morris Library on The Green, in the first-floor women's restroom in Memorial Hall on The Green, the Gore Wing of the UD Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Laboratory on Academy Street, and first-floor unisex handicapped-accessible restroom in the Willard Hall Education Building at 16 W. Main St.

Police did not explain how, if Mediola-Soto used only two cameras, they were found in so many sites or if they saw him move or re-install them.

When UD police searched his Newark home, they confiscated his laptop computer, external hard drive and two cellphones, court documents say.

About 1,500 files of computerized video images are being analyzed by the Middletown Police Department's forensics unit, O'Brien said.

Police still are trying to identify all potentially recorded sites, she said.

Under UD's Student Code of Conduct, graduate students arrested are referred to the Office of Graduate and Professional Studies for adjudication. Police said Saturday he had been expelled.

"It is extremely disturbing that this crime was perpetrated against our community invading the privacy of so many women on and around this campus," Harker said.

Anyone with additional information about the case is asked to contact UD police at the same number or UDPrivacy@udel.edu or (302) 831-2222.

UD police set up a hotline at (302) 831-4800 for those who believe they may have been victimized, saying a detective will arrange to review the images and see if they are on the seized videos.

Additional action also is planned as a result of the crime, Harker said.

"We will consult an independent campus security and privacy expert to help us identify what measures other campuses may have taken in response to similar occurrences," he said. "When our students and faculty members return to our campuses in the fall, we will initiate a public awareness campaign on our responsibility to protect our community and report any suspicious activity."

Contact robin brown at (302) 324-2856 or rbrown@delawareonline.com. Find her on Facebook and follow her on Twitter @rbrowndelaware. Contact Terri Sanginiti at (302) 324-2771 or tsanginiti@delawareonline.com.