Teacher accused of taking hundreds of up-skirt photos at Hague arts academy

Pim V., a Dutch artist and a teacher at the Fine Arts department of the Royal Academy of Art (KABK) in The Hague, is accused of secretly taking up-skirt photos of hundreds of women, including with a camera he hid under his table at the academy. The photos also included women a the KABK, the board of the academy informed all students and teachers, NRC reports.

V. was arrested at the end of August when a woman caught him secretly taking pictures of her in a fitting room of a Utrecht store. The woman reported him to the police, who searched his home and found “hundreds” of photographs of women’s crotches.

“No one at the KABK realized that the teacher in question had been taking photos under the table for years,” Ranti Tjan, director of the KABK, said to NRC. It was a “total surprise” when the police showed up to search his office on August 29.

“I immediately made an appointment with the teacher on September 1. He confessed everything. He assured me that he never took pictures of minors, teachers, and men. He also promised to go to therapy,” Tjan said to the newspaper. “This is unacceptable behavior for us as an academy, no matter how much this teacher was liked by colleagues and students. At my request, we parted ways with effect from that same day. The teacher agreed to that.”

V. has been arraigned and is no longer in pre-trial custody. He’s awaiting his trial at home, according to the newspaper.