A dean at Rutgers University was arrested on Monday after “upskirt” videos were found on one of his devices, with prosecutors saying he recorded them while working for New Jersey’s flagship state university in New Brunswick.
Josh Kohut, 51, the dean of research at the Rutgers School of Environmental and Biological Sciences, was charged with fourth-degree invasion of privacy, the state’s attorney general, Jennifer Davenport, said in a news release on Tuesday.
Rutgers officials said that they placed Dr. Kohut on administrative leave after “being informed of the extremely disturbing charges” and that he had been barred from campus.
Ms. Davenport said a search warrant was executed on Monday after an investigation into Dr. Kohut, who lives in Cranbury, N.J.
Five of his electronic devices were seized, according to court documents. A preliminary inspection of the devices “revealed a video of another person’s ‘undergarment-clad intimate parts,’” prosecutors said.
“The defendant is alleged to have used his mobile phone to record ‘upskirt’ videos without his victim’s knowledge,” Ms. Davenport said in a statement. “An invasion of privacy like this is not just disturbing, it is also a criminal act.”
Prosecutors said the charge carries a sentence of up to 18 months in prison, and a fine of up to $10,000.
Dr. Kohut could not immediately be reached on Wednesday. It was not clear if he had a lawyer.
Dr. Kohut has been a presence on Rutgers’ New Brunswick campus for nearly 20 years. He arrived in September 1997 as a doctoral student in physical oceanography. He received his Ph.D. in 2002, and was promptly hired as the director of the Rutgers Center for Ocean Observing Leadership. He has been a professor since 2008, and won a university award for teaching excellence in 2014.
Dr. Kohut grew up in New Jersey, and has said that his interest in the physics of the ocean began along the shores of Barnegat Bay.
“I am involved in many research and education programs that range in scope from storm intensity, offshore wind and local water quality monitoring off the N.J. coast; regional fisheries along the U.S. East Coast; and environmental studies of polar ecosystems in the coastal waters surrounding Antarctica,” he wrote on his Rutgers faculty page.
Rutgers students are arriving on campus for the fall semester, which begins on Tuesday.
Many of the laws in the United States prohibiting “upskirting” — the practice of taking unauthorized photos or videos under a woman’s skirt — were passed or clarified over the last decade, according to Mary Anne Franks, a law professor at George Washington University and president of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative. That coincided with the rise of what she called “creepshots” taken by voyeurs in public places.
All 50 states now make “upskirting” illegal, either through state-specific statutes targeting invasion of privacy, or under broader state laws prohibiting video voyeurism and unlawful surveillance.
Professor Franks pointed to a 2014 Massachusetts State Supreme Judicial Court ruling that a state law prohibiting the secret photographing of nude or partly nude people did not apply to “upskirt” photographs taken in public. The state Legislature passed a bill banning “upskirting” the next day.
“While the law has evolved on the issue since then, it’s not clear how much impact this has had in deterring the abuse,” she said. “Like street harassment, it’s a form of behavior that’s challenging to apprehend, and even harder to investigate and prosecute.”
At the federal level, the Video Voyeurism Prevention Act of 2004 prohibits “knowingly videotaping, photographing, filming, recording by any means or broadcasting an image of a private area of an individual, without that individual’s consent, under circumstances in which that individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy.” The act makes “upskirting” a federal crime in federal buildings and national parks, and on military bases.
The rapid evolution of technology is perhaps the biggest challenge to overcome, Professor Franks said.
“Deepfake generators and Meta glasses are normalizing sexual surveillance in even more terrifying and widespread ways, especially for younger generations,” she said. “Until our society actually begins to meaningfully address the root causes of voyeurism and sexual exploitation — misogyny and entitlement — these abuses will continue to flourish.”
Kirsten Noyes contributed research.
