UIC Swimmer Recorded Female Athletes In Locker Room, Prosecutors Say

A freshman swimmer at the University of Illinois – Chicago is charged with recording video of his female teammates changing clothes in a team locker room.

19-year-old Joseph Dalesandro signed a confession admitting that he attempted to record video of the women undressing, according to the Chicago Tribune. He’s currently banned from the UIC Physical Education Building and was ordered to be held on $50,000 bail.

Prosecutors say Dalesandro used a gap between a wall and the ceiling in the men’s locker room to record the women. Per The Tribune‘s report, prosecutors allege Dalesandro climbed on top of a locker in the men’s locker room and put his phone on top of the wall to record two members of the women’s team as they changed into swimsuits. Prosecutors say that video was three minutes long. Then they also allege that Dalesandro returned to the gap in the wall two hours later and left his phone recording video for about 45 minutes. That second video allegedly captured the same two women along with two more teammates changing. The women are reported to be between the ages of 19 and 20.

DNA Info Chicago reports that one of the women heard laughter from the men’s locker room and spotted the phone when she looked up towards the gap. The women grabbed the phone and reported the incident to their coach. The coach called campus police. The ensuing investigation found the phone to be registered to Dalesandro and his mother and was logged into UIC’s campus wireless network under Dalesandro’s username while the videos were being recorded.

This whole incident took place on February 2nd. Dalesandro was arrested on Thursday, March 30. The Chicago Tribune reports that Dalesandro signed a confession “admitting he had tried to capture the video of the women naked.” NDA Info Chicago reports that Dalesandro “confessed to making the videos” and that the Assistant State Attorney said Dalesandro “stated he knew what he had done was illegal.”

The Tribune reports that Dalesandro’s lawyer termed the incident as “a tasteless prank that went nowhere,” and said Dalesandro didn’t share the video after recording it. Dalesandro is charged with a felony account of unauthorized video recording.

37
Leave a Reply

Subscribe
Notify of

37 Comments
newest
oldest most voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Dawgpaddle
7 years ago

Hey no one got hurt here. Why is everybody acting like the Princeton AD???

Rest of Humanity
Reply to  Dawgpaddle
7 years ago

Dear Troll,

Your games don’t work here.

Ken
Reply to  Dawgpaddle
7 years ago

No one got hurt? The women who were recorded weren’t affected by this? Violated? Had their privacy and security compromised? I don’t think so.

50free
7 years ago

I know this is not the point but how did someone have enough storage to record a 45min video on an iPhone?

Team Rwanda
Reply to  50free
7 years ago

Where did you see that it was an iPhone?

Swimfan
Reply to  Team Rwanda
7 years ago

It was mentioned in the sun times article.

Ken
7 years ago

Very fortunate that the young women being filmed were able to retrieve the phone and hand it over to campus police. Lots of lives affected by this situation: victims, perpetrator, parents, the school. And on and on. Dalesandro will most likely be required to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life, be mandated to participate in a sex offender program of some kind, undergo invasive therapy with plethysmograph testing, and so forth. I empathize most with the parents….on both sides.

G.I.N.A
7 years ago

If they let him in to the locker room , he would not have had to do climb up into that cavity . He could have fallen !

SwimMom2
7 years ago

I’m concerned that this could happen at UIC. Countless children, teens and college students have used those locker rooms. Bet this isn’t the first time that someone did something like this. UIC has a lot to answer for here –
For having substandard facilities that could be taken advantage of.

Heartbroken for the parents and sister of this young man who violated his teammates and threw away a bright future. Heartbroken for the teammates who had to stay on the team with him while his rights were protected.

Neil
Reply to  SwimMom2
7 years ago

This happened in the varsity locker rooms, not the ones the general public/kids use. Luckily the general locker rooms don’t have the same strange crack/opening that was present in the varsity locker room.

SwimMom2
Reply to  Neil
7 years ago

Good to know. Thanks… still – a gap? Inviting trouble.

Swimmermom
Reply to  Neil
7 years ago

Is it in locker room the club swimmers use when large meets are hosted?

Neil
Reply to  Swimmermom
7 years ago

No, this did not happen in that locker room

Swimfan
Reply to  Swimmermom
7 years ago

As mentioned above this was not in the locker rooms the general public uses when at meets. These are private locker rooms only accessible to the college team swimmers. Sounds like the gap between the top of the wall and the ceiling was due to a smoke detector – hopefully there will be a fix for that.

Taa
7 years ago

I’d be a little upset that it was so easy to spy into the women’s locker room. Probably not the first time its happened.

Sccoach
Reply to  Taa
7 years ago

the victims should have a good case against the school if they decide to go that route.

SwimMom2
Reply to  Sccoach
7 years ago

Or transfer schools… how comfortable can they be knowing that they were seen by “teammates” and the offender was allowed to stick around for 8 weeks? That must have been a horrible environment – bordering on abusive.

vladislav22
7 years ago

I mean hasn’t he heard of free internet porn if he wants to see nudity that much? 🙂

Markster
Reply to  vladislav22
7 years ago

Lol dude

Sccoach
7 years ago

Might be a good idea to take him off the roster

About Jared Anderson

Jared Anderson

Jared Anderson swam for nearly twenty years. Then, Jared Anderson stopped swimming and started writing about swimming. He's not sick of swimming yet. Swimming might be sick of him, though. Jared was a YMCA and high school swimmer in northern Minnesota, and spent his college years swimming breaststroke and occasionally pretending …

Read More »