Man Accused Of Upskirting Over 500 Women Caught In The Act In Madrid

A man accused of recording 555 upskirting videos of women without their knowledge or consent was arrested in Madrid, Spain, on Wednesday.

The suspect, identified only as a 53-year-old Colombian native, was caught taking a video of a woman on the city’s Metro system using a cellphone hidden in his backpack, according to CNN. The man allegedly uploaded nearly 300 such videos to a porn site and has been racking up millions of views since last summer. Some of the suspect’s victims were minors. 

Spanish police called the man “one of the biggest predators of women’s privacy” in a Wednesday statement. They also uploaded a video of the suspect’s arrest to Twitter. 

The term “upskirting” describes the act of taking pictures or videos up an individual’s skirt without their consent. Similar to peeping Toms, upskirting predators often get sexual gratification from filming private parts of women without their consent in public spaces. The practice is illegal in Spain and Great Britain, but few court cases have actually been tried in Spain, The New York Times reports.

The suspect searched for victims every single day “in a compulsive manner,” according to the Spanish police. He allegedly filmed 29 women in one day. 

“The detained man generally recorded his victims in busy areas such as the metro before following them to the street, sometimes even introducing himself to them in supermarkets or shops in order to obtain better shots of their intimate areas, which he recorded in close proximity,” the police statement continues.

Police have raided the suspect’s home and found a laptop and hard drives with hundreds of upskirting videos.