A Midland student who secretly filmed young women taking baths and showers at his university hall of residence has admitted six voyeurism charges.
Charles Greaves (19) hid a tiny digital camera inside an adapted shower gel bottle in the bathroom of a mixed hall for students at the University of Wales, in Bangor.
Greaves, of Wellington, Shropshire, tried to film female students as they showered but failed to get good quality images, Caernarfon Magistrates' Court heard.
Instead, the overweight loner placed a sign on the bathroom door requesting all students to take baths rather than showers. He admitted three counts of installing equipment to gain images for sexual gratification and three counts of viewing images for sexual gratification.
Greaves, who committed the offences at Emrys Evans Hall but is no longer a student at the university, will be sentenced at Caernarfon Crown Court on September 7.
District judge Andrew Shaw declined to sentence Greaves as he could only impose a maximum sentence of six months' imprisonment. The maximum sentence from the crown court is two years.
Mel Hughes, prosecuting, told the court that Greaves committed the offences over an approximate ten-day period in May of this year.
He said that other students considered Greaves "a loner" whose behaviour became increasingly odd throughout the academic year.
He explained that one student noticed that Greaves always seemed to be loitering in or outside the bathroom. She spotted the camera while bathing on the morning of May 22 and the police were called.
She also handed over the shower gel bottle, which had been specially adapted to hold the camera and pierced to create a hole for the lens.
Police seized Greaves' laptop computer and found poor quality images of two women in the shower. They also found better images of the same two women and a third woman in the bath.
Greaves admitted to the police that it must have been him who took the images but said he could not remember doing so.
Greaves, who attended court with his parents, was said to have suffered a mental breakdown since the incident.
His solicitor, Maldwyn Parry, said: "He deeply regrets what he did and this has caused him a great deal of embarrassment and he knows he has badly let down his parents. When I asked him about what he did, he told me he hated himself.
"He said 'I can't believe I did it, they are my friends and every night I hate myself'."
