Police in Newark, Delaware are inviting women who may have been filmed secretly in restrooms at the University of Delaware campus or nearby to visit the station and see if they are on videos seized from a former doctoral student who is now in custody.

The suspect, a 38-year-old Mexican identified as Javier Mendiola-Soto, told university police that he used just two miniature cameras that he hid inside sanitary napkin holders to film unsuspecting women, possibly hundreds of them.

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The Delaware-based News Journal says Mendiola-Soto is being held at the Young Correctional Institution on a US$42,000 secured bond. Even if he manages to make the cash bond, immigration authorities have added a detainer to keep him in jail until he serves his sentence and gets deported.

Skip Homiak, executive director of campus and public safety at the UD, said the state attorney general's office is convinced they have enough evidence to successfully prosecute the suspect, without the necessity of inviting the women in the videos to testify.

The former doctoral candidate, expelled from the university after his arrest July 1, told police he had downloaded 1,500 separate videos taken of women. Some of the women may have been recorded three or four times.

Mendiola-Soto has been charged with 21 counts of felony violation of privacy.

University officials will not need to attempt additional identification from the victims for prosecution purposes, but they will allow women to testify if they wanted to.

UD has set up a hotline for related calls and will arrange for a private review of the images accompanied by female detectives.

The suspect's nefarious activities have been going on since 2012, and was discovered only on June 27 when a woman spotted the hidden camera in a staff restroom at the Delaware Biotechnology Institute and reported it to security.

It turned out that Mendiola-Soto have been moving the two cameras among restrooms in five locations within campus, and at least two locations outside, including his residence in Newark.

It is still not clear how the suspect was able to move in and out of women's restrooms and place and remove cameras there without being detected. Police said there is no indication that he had an accomplice.

TagsUniversity of Delaware, Newark