Peeper driven by thrill of secrets

Photo: The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

Chef and restaurateur Allan Bosomworth arrives at Provincial Court. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck

The lawyer for a man who covertly recorded people using the washroom in his Vancouver restaurant says her client was driven by the thrill of knowing people's secrets, not sexual impulses.

Maegan Richards asked a Vancouver provincial court judge to impose a conditional discharge for Allan Bosomworth, who was the co-owner of Two Chefs and a Table restaurant where he hid a camera in the coed washroom in December 2012.

Crown lawyer Ellen Leno asked for a one-year suspended sentence, wants Bosomworth to report to a probation officer and not be allowed to possess any device used for capturing recordings or video.

Leno also asked that the man not have any contact with Karl Gregg, his business partner who first discovered the USB-key sized device and found five videos showing men and women using the restaurant's washroom.

Gregg read a victim impact statement to the court, in which he said the incident had affected him financially, socially and emotionally, that he now struggled to trust people and that someone wrote the word "rat" across his front door in red pen in October 2013.

Bosomworth pleaded guilty in September to one count of secretly observing nudity in a private place.

Note to readers: This is a corrected story. A previous version said the Crown asked for a conditional sentence.