It’s an alarming trend that may have America’s dads and husbands standing watch outside their daughters’ and wives’ dressing rooms: Barely months after Target announced its plan to let men enter women’s facilities, teenage girls and women across America are catching creepy men secretly filming them while they change clothes.
New reports of Target’s peeping toms have surfaced in North Dakota, Massachusetts, Texas, and Ohio.
According to a 16-year-old girl who visited a Target in Bismark, North Dakota, a man positioned a phone under her door with the camera facing up.
“When she walked out, the man entered a different dressing room,” reported WDAY-6 in Fargo, North Dakota.
The manager of the Target declined to comment on the incident, according to the station.
Bismarck police said the suspect is a white male, age 30 to 50, possible around six feet tall, with a muscular build and glasses.
Cops are asking for help finding another peeping tom in Revere, Massachusetts, who reportedly spied on a 17-year-old girl changing in a Target dressing room.
Police have still photos of the suspect they say is a white male in his 30s with brown hair and a white button-down shirt. He drives a Toyota Prius.
Also in May at a Frisco, Texas, Target, a 29-year-old man, Charles Sidney McKissack III, was caught by police after he reportedly used his cell phone to film an underage girl in the women’s dressing room.
“Investigators say the suspect put his cell phone over the wall of a female changing room and shot video of the girl,” according to a report by Fox 4 in Dallas.
He ran off after the girl saw the camera, but police released footage of him captured by a store camera.
And in April, Joshua Sheldon, 33, pleaded guilty to voyeurism in Miami Township, Ohio, after he reportedly looked under a women’s dressing room door in Target.
Sheldon was sentenced to 90 days in jail and ordered to pay a $380 fine. He is required to register as a sex offender and stay away from Target stores for two years.
In April, Target announced a corporate policy change that would open all bathroom and dressing room doors to both sexes, depending on their gender identities.
A day after Target declared it “welcomes transgender team members and guests to use the restroom or fitting room facility that corresponds with their gender identity,” the American Family Association called for a boycott of Target and created an online pledge in which signees could promise to shop elsewhere. One week after the pledge was created, it had more than 985,000 signatures.
At the time of this report, the pledge had 1,353,396 signatures.