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Pennsylvania Man Charged After Allegedly Videotaping Co-Worker Using Breast Pump In Private Office

By Dawn Papple
Published on: 13:10 PST, Apr 8, 2015

An office employee in Douglassville, Pennsylvania has been charged after he allegedly hid a camera in a private room with the alleged intent of videotaping his co-worker pumping breast milk. The 46-year-old Berks County man allegedly videotaped his co-worker, a new mother, using her breast pump, according to police in Delaware County. The woman, according to an affidavit, breastfeeds her infant at home and pumps her milk in a private office in the building while she is at work in order to provide her baby with breast milk when she is not able to nurse the child.

Thomas Stier allegedly hid a camera in the private room and disguised it by using an accordion-style envelope with a tiny hole in it. Stier allegedly placed the concealed camera in the envelope and onto a window ledge, police said. On March 19, the woman, who is not named, noticed the envelope with the camera in it and called the police.

When police asked Thomas Stier about the camera, he admitted to them that he hid the video recorder in the accordion-style envelope, according to The Mercury News. He reportedly told police that he knew that the private office was used by the woman to pump her breast milk and admitted to the police that his intent was “to capture photos of her exposed breast during the process.”

Police say that Thomas Stier consented to have his Cisco flip video camera searched. When the police checked the recording, the woman was seen using the breast pump in the private office room. Police didn’t tell the media the name of the company that Stier and his co-worker worked for, but stated that the office building was located on the first-hundred block of Campus Boulevard in Newtown, PA. He was reportedly charged with invasion of privacy.

Stier isn’t the first person to be charged with privacy invasion for videotaping women pumping their breast milk at work.

In 2012, a DeSales University employee, named John Bednarik II, was charged with misdemeanor invasion of privacy after a woman said he videotaped her “partially nude, utilizing a breast pump.” According to the New York Daily News, he served as the university’s director of campus environment until he was fired in the wake of the allegations. He pleaded guilty and, after an appeal, was sentenced to probation and was told to register for 15 years on the state’s sex offender registry, according to Lehigh Valley Live.

Two years ago, in Oregon, Russell Gordon was sentenced to 10 days in jail followed by three years of probation for what a judge called “egregious invasion of privacy,” after using a camera hidden in a pen to videotape a woman pumping her breast milk, according to KPTV News.

[Photo via Ian Lamont/In 30 Minutes]

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