A Navy sailor used his mobile telephone to film a woman in the shower aboard an Australian vessel.
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The prosecution of the sailor was a military first for the use of tougher laws covering voyeuristic conduct – introduced only weeks before the offence.
Prosecutions for low-level sexual misconduct by men on subordinate women in the Defence Force had spiked in recent years, the Director of Military Prosecutions, Jennifer Woodward, CSC, said in a report.
The junior member of the Royal Australian Navy targeted the subordinate sailor while she showered in March 2015.
The man fought charges, but was found guilty at a military trial of inappropriately capturing visual data of the woman.
The expanded offence had been designed to prosecute behaviour made possible by new technology, including using a phone to see up a women's skirt, using a phone to record in a change room, streaming live data, or taking photos of people having sex.
He was reduced in rank and has since left the defence force.
Military courts, unlike civilian courts, do not publish the identity of offenders.
The prosecution of the sailor was the first-time an expanded law covering voyeuristic conduct – introduced only weeks before the offence - had been used.
The Defence Department said no policies or procedures changed as a result of the incident.
Brigadier Woodward, in a report, said many of the incidents referred to her office had been committed in training establishments.
However, she said there had been an "encouraging increase" in the number of complaints involving superiors or those in a position of relative authority such as instructors.
"I am hopeful that this represents a growing confidence that such complaints will be taken seriously and followed through," she wrote.
She said the alleged offences of misconduct had ranged from squeezing breasts or buttocks, touching a woman's genitalia, threatening failure if there was a refusal to engage in a sexual relationship, inappropriate or suggestive messages using an instant messaging system, filming a naked female showering, and viewing a naked female showering by peering under the adjoining partition between the showers.
In another incident, outlined in her report, an instructor at a training unit had pinched the buttocks, kissed, and indecently touched the genital region of four women while out drinking on Anzac Day in 2016.
He pleaded guilty to the misconduct.
Brigadier Woodward said many other incidents go unreported "because the complainant does not believe that he or she will be believed and many just want to move on with their careers away from the training establishment, and away from the alleged perpetrator".
"Excessive consumption of alcohol is a recurring feature of this offending, however many of the offences appear to be systematic and planned occurrences over an extensive period of time, and in some circumstances perpetrated on a number of subordinate females," she wrote.
