A Sydney supermarket employee is at a loss to explain why he up-skirted customers and filmed his co-workers in the toilet, telling a court he could not stop.
Bibek Guragain was arrested in June after an 18-year-old woman noticed a phone near a toilet at Woolworths in Surry Hills.
The 23-year-old has since pleaded guilty to filming someone in a private act without consent and filming a person’s private parts without consent, and says he still doesn’t understand why he did it.
Woolworths shelf-stacker and Nepalese student Bibek Guragain has pleaded guilty to filming up the skirts and dresses of customers using a secret camera application on his iPhone
Nepalese national Bibek Guragain, 23, filmed up the skirts and dresses of dozens of young female customers at the Woolworths supermarket in Sydney’s inner-city Surry Hills
Bibek Guragain was arrested in June after an 18-year-old woman noticed a phone near a toilet at Woolworths in Surry Hills
‘I remember wishing that I could stop but I could not and I can’t even explain it,’ Guragain said in a letter tendered in court.
‘I wish I could turn back time and make everything alright but I am afraid I won’t be able to do it and I have got to live with that guilt now.’
The Nepalese national had his student visa revoked after his first court appearance in June, and he was detained at Villawood Detention Centre until his sentence at Downing Centre Local Court on Wednesday.
He was taken into the custody of Corrective Services NSW after magistrate Joanne Keogh sentenced him to 10 months in prison with a non-parole period of six months, backdated from June.
Ms Keogh acknowledged Guragain suffered public shame and humiliation and had likely thrown three years of study at a Sydney university down the drain.
‘But it really doesn’t compare with the shame and the gross invasion of privacy that his offending meant to his victims,’ she said.
The Woolworths supermarket in Sydney’s inner-city Surry Hills where Bibek Guragain filmed up the skirts of customers while they walked in aisles and waited in line to be served
The judge said Guragain filmed under women’s skirts and shorts on multiple occasions when he was meant to be working.
He also used a ‘secret filming mode’ on his phone and placed it in a staff toilet, with police later finding more than 250 saved files in his secret camera application.
Police prosecutor Ross Mitchell told the court his offences were serious and ongoing, and involved a degree of planning.
Guragain in his letter apologised to his co-workers, family and friends for breaking their trust.
‘I don’t know if I deserve a chance or not but I would like to assure you that this will be the last time I engaged in an unethical and unlawful activity,’ he said.
His barrister Thomas Skinner said the odds of him ‘being at liberty in the Australian community again are very, very slim’.
A Woolworths shelf-stacker on a student visa used a secret camera app on his iPhone to ‘up-skirt’ dozens of customers until a colleague caught him filming her in the toilet.
Bibek Guragain was arrested only after the teen co-worker spotted his iPhone 6s filming from his open locker as she used the staff toilet in the Woolworths Central store at Surry Hills in inner-city Sydney.
When police searched the 23-year-old’s phone they found 258 video files including footage of dozens of young women taken using the ‘Secret Camera +’ app over the previous six months.
Some of the files showed Guragain’s face before or after he had been secretly filming women. Others taken in the staff toilet clearly showed one colleague’s vagina and another’s penis.
The Nepalese national had been filming up the skirts of unsuspecting Woolworths customers, as well as other women on trains, at a cafe and a McDonald’s restaurant from January to June this year.
Shelf-stacker Bibek Guragain is due to be sentenced over 48 counts of filming a person in a private act and filming a person’s private parts for his own sexual arousal or gratification
Guragain has pleaded guilty in Downing Centre Local Court to 42 counts of filming a person’s private parts for sexual arousal or gratification and six counts of filming a person in a private act with the same motive.
Only two of his victims – one female and one male colleague filmed in the staff toilet on the night he was arrested – have been identified by police.
Guragain’s perverted reign came to an end about three hours after he started his shelf-stacking shift at 7pm on June 24.
That evening he placed his phone in an open locker in the staff changing room and pointed it at the unisex toilet, which was less than 1 metre away.
Bibek Guragain used an application called Secret Camera + on his iPhone 6s (pictured) to covertly film up the skirts of customers while they shopped at a Sydney Woolworths store
The toilet did not have a door because the changing room had its own lock and was designed to be used by one person at a time.
About 9.30pm Guragain returned to the changing room and activated the Secret Camera + app, which made the phone’s screen blank while it filmed. He turned the lights off and left.
Half an hour later an 18-year-old female colleague entered the changing room and used the toilet. While seated, with her pants around her ankles, she noticed Guragain’s phone pointed towards her and felt uncomfortable.
When the colleague left the toilet she opened Guragain’s locker and picked up his phone. She footage of herself using the toilet and called police.
When Nepalese student and shelf-stacker Bibek Guragain wasn’t filming up the skirts of Woolworths customers he found victims at other places such as train stations
Guragain approached officers while they talked to his colleague and asked ‘Is everything OK? What’s going on?’ He appeared nervous, according to a statement of facts tendered to court.
Police later found 42 videos Guragain had secretly recorded while holding his phone under the skirts of women shopping in the store, as well as others on trains, at a cafe and what appeared to be a McDonald’s restaurant.
The videos of customers were taken while they walked in aisles, waited at check-outs to pay for groceries and used self-service registers.
After one episode in which he filmed up a woman’s black leather skirt Guragain put down the phone and filming his own face while he resumed unpacking boxes.
In each case the statement of facts describes what the woman was wearing – usually a short, loose-fitting skirt or dress. Almost all feature the colour of her underwear.
‘The camera is being hand-held at a low angle and directed upwards,’ one description states. ‘The video depicts the camera being walked around the store and at one point passes an unknown female wearing a black and white skirt.
Shelf-stacker Bibek Guragain picked young female customers wearing short, loose-fitting skirts to follow around the aisles of a Woolworths store so he could film their private parts
‘The unknown female is stopped in an aisle at the store. The camera is directed up the unknown female’s loose-fitting skirt. The image clearly depicts up the unknown female’s legs and her buttocks and blue underwear.’
Most of the videos taken in the store were made late at night or early in the morning. The shortest of those videos is 28 seconds but most run for several minutes.
‘In total the above offences are depicted over 160 minutes of video footage and are created at several different locations over approximately six months,’ the statement of facts says.
‘This is a clear pattern of behaviour by the accused which shows a complete disregard for the privacy of his victims whom appear to all be aged between 20 and 35 years old.
One one occasion Bibek Guragain used his iPhone 6s to film up the short, loose-fitting, pink skirt of a woman standing in front of him at what appeared to be a McDonald’s restaurant
‘The images were created using an iPhone application called Secret Camera + which police alleged is designed to create video files discretely and without the knowledge or consent of the victims.
‘This shows a clear intention to obtain the images without the accused drawing notice to himself.’
‘Police located over 250 files saved within the Secret Camera + application which depict the accused appearing to be either testing the application or attempting to commit offences relating to filming people’s private parts without their consent.’
Guragain was not in court when his case was mentioned on Wednesday. A psychological report has been requested to be tendered with a pre-sentence report when Guragain is due to be sentenced on October 4.
Nepalese student visa holder and serial upskirter Bibek Guragain followed a young woman up the stairs at a train station so he could use his mobile phone to film up her skirt.