A college student in Pennsylvania secretly recorded more than 20 women in public bathrooms in various locations throughout three states, including at a campus arts center, authorities said.
Joshua Yannuzzi, a 24-year-old student at West Chester University, victimized more than 20 females, but many more may eventually be identified, Chester County District Attorney Tom Hogan announced Tuesday.
Yannuzzi, of Honey Brook, had been scheduled to perform in the university’s production of “My Fair Lady” in November, but is now banned from campus following his arrest, authorities said.
“This defendant was a technological predator,” Hogan said. “Using his ties in the theater community, he specifically targeted certain young women for hidden recordings in private places, all for his own sexual gratification. The victims, the victims’ friends and family and the entire theater community have been betrayed.”
Yannuzzi was arrested and charged with felony wiretap violations, criminal use of a communication facility, invasion of privacy and other counts after a woman found an iPhone taped to the inside of a single-person bathroom at the university’s O.E. Bull Center on Oct. 10. The phone, which was recording at the time and had been pointed toward the toilet, was later turned over to police, Hogan said.
Investigators later found surveillance recordings showing Yannuzzi entering the bathroom before the victim entered and then re-entering after she left. After a search warrant was executed on his iPhone, Yannuzzi admitted to police that he hid the device inside bathrooms to record women on more than 50 occasions over the last two years, Hogan said.
Yannuzzi also allegedly recorded unsuspecting young women — many of whom he knew from the local theater community — at several off-campus locations, including the Footlighters Theater in Pennsylvania, the Street Lamp Productions Theater in Maryland and several homes in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.
Yannuzzi is also accused of uploading video footage of one of his victims to a website where it had been viewed more than 1,000 times, Hogan said.
“We need other victims to come forward and help us prosecute this defendant,” he said in a statement. “Anybody who had contact with Josh Yannuzzi in theater productions or living arrangements is a potential victim.”
Anyone who thinks they’ve been victimized by Yannuzzi should call Chester County police at (610) 344-6866.
