“You took a part of me that wasn’t for you,” she said, her identity protected by law.
She still suffers bouts of anxiety and paranoia, and can no longer shower or use the toilet without looking for a hidden camera. “I am sad, I felt ashamed,” she said.
“There’s no price you can pay that will ever erase that,” she told him.
Now 24, Park had pleaded guilty earlier to 20 charges - 16 of making intimate visual recordings and four of causing harm by posting a digital communication.
He was sentenced to 10 months of home detention.
Judge Jane Forrest said it was in society’s best interest that he continue his rehabilitation, which would be interrupted by a jail sentence.
Gross breach of privacy
Court documents show Park knew all 16 of his victims, some of whom saw him as a close friend and confidante.
“The abuse of trust is significant,” Judge Forrest said at a hearing in November, calling the recordings a “gross or extreme” breach of the women’s privacy.
Park was as young as 16 or 17 when he started secretly taking 100 photos and videos of his first victim, whom he met in high school - out of revenge, the court heard.
He would approach her with his phone pretending to be texting, and take close-up shots of her clothed breasts and buttocks.
He later edited these photos, adding images of penises or semen on and around her face.
He even installed a hidden camera at her grandmother’s house to film her showering and using the toilet.
When he went to university, he led a student association where he organised trips and gatherings for members.
On two such trips in 2021, one at a campsite and another at an Airbnb, he arrived early and set up hidden cameras in the bathrooms, filming his victims showering and using the toilet.
He uploaded four of the bathroom videos to various Asian fetish porn sites, later found by the victims.
The same year, he also planted hidden cameras around a motor lodge room where he was staying and filmed himself and a Tinder date having sex.
Police searched Park’s home in December 2021 and seized his hidden camera devices, a laptop, a cellphone and several USBs and micro SD cards.
The court today ordered the devices be destroyed.
Park’s lawyer Anoushka Bloem said Park started counselling shortly after he was charged and was serious about rehabilitation.
“He’s still young . . . not making the best decisions during this early period of his life,” she said, also pointing to psychological reports that said he would struggle to cope in prison.
The prosecution argued for a jail term, pointing to the sheer volume of images and videos, Park’s premeditation and planning and the impact on the young women whose most private moments were published online.
“Only a sentence of imprisonment can adequately deter and denounce offending of this type and scale,” Sergeant Paul Watkins said.
Judge Forrest said the case was difficult - Park’s relatively young age was set against the “very significant” and lasting psychological impact on victims, apparent in their letters to the court.
More than one spoke of Park’s charm and confidence, only to later feel ashamed to have been friends with “a monster”. They suffered depression and anxiety, and some had to seek medical help, the judge said.
One victim wrote that she now fears men, even her partner.
The judge said the starting point was three years and three months in jail, but discounts for Park’s youth, rehabilitation, remorse, and his guilty plea worked out to 10 months of home detention.
Park’s lawyer had earlier asked for a discount for his previous good character - he has no prior court history - but was declined on this point.
“When offending commences in 2017 . . . I certainly would not call it good character,” the judge said.
