A Missouri hospital employee pleaded guilty last week to a single count of invasion of privacy for putting a secret recording device in a hospital locker room and rcording fellow employees on the toilet.
Gabriel Vanriette, 40, was only charged with one count despite recordings found of eight victims, all of whom wanted to press charges, KCTV reported.
Vanriette was fired from the North Kansas City Hospital after the incident, but was promptly hired and was still working at Truman Hospital, now known as University Health, as of last week.
According to court documents, a charge nurse found a pen with a camera lens in the emergency department’s staff locker room on September 14, 2023. She said that she initially thought it was just pen but then noticed the camera lens, pointed toward the toilet and that it contained a microSD car.
Investigators were called and initially found two videos on the card — one showing a hand moving the camera and the second showing a hand moving the camera along with the reflection of a white man with “brownish hair and wearing a bluish green scrub top” in the bathroom mirror” followed by someone using the toilet.
Investigators sent to pen off to a crime lab for further investigation and pulled footage from a surveillance camera outside the locker room as well as a record of employee key swipes on the locker room door. Those records showed Vanriette, who did not work in the emergency department and did not have a locker there, entering to locked room 15 times during his 12-hour shift that day. He was in the room for a less than a minute each time.
When questioned about his activity, Vanriette admitted being in the locker room “probably a few” times and said that it was likely because “he and his wife were sick with food poisoning, so he was in and out of the bathroom a lot.” Investigators told him his visits lined up with time stamps on the videos and asked if he’d seen the pen before. “Not particularly,” he replied.
The crime lab then found eight more files with seven additional victims that had been deleted from the pen camera. Some of those clips showed Vanriette’s face and his name badge.
After all the victims said they wished to pursue charges, Vanriette was charged with one count of invasion of privacy in December.
He entered a plea agreement on February 27 that will see him serve just three years in prison.
His employment status at University Health is unclear.
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[Featured image: North Kansas City Hospital/Google Maps]
