Global articles on espionage, spying, bugs, and other interesting topics.

Spying in the shower

”I FROZE, I didn’t know what to do, I felt trapped … I needed to get out to try to feel safe.”

This was how a female sailor on board HMAS Parramatta yesterday described her shock on January 2 this year when, drying herself after a shower, she glimpsed a mirror allegedly angled towards her from beneath the adjacent shower stall.

It was just after 7am and the ship was anchored off Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates.

The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, told a navy court-martial in Sydney yesterday that as she had made her way into the bathroom she noticed Lieutenant James (”Jim”) McLaren shaving himself at a sink nearby.

At the time, they were the only occupants of the area which the navy calls the ”showers and heads”. She and Lieutenant McLaren had exchanged brief ”good mornings” before they both entered separate but adjoining shower stalls.

She had turned the water off after two or three minutes and was bent over, drying her lower legs, when she saw the mirror, which she testified was ”in the palm of a hand”, pointing in her direction.

She fled the cubicles and ran into Lieutenant Christopher Andersen, the ship’s medical officer, who had come in to use the sinks.

”She was in an acute distressed state,” Lieutenant Andersen told the hearing yesterday. ”She looked so distressed that I thought she had witnessed something quite terrible or catastrophic.”

”She said ‘Jim, Jim!’ … I thought he had committed suicide.”

Lieutenant McLaren is facing two charges before a military court presided over by Judge Advocate Jennifer Woodward.

He is charged with committing an act of indecency without consent, and as an alternative with acting in a manner likely to prejudice naval discipline.

He has pleaded not guilty.

Under cross examination by defending counsel, Major J. Lo Schiavo, the woman told the hearing she and Lieutenant McLaren had kissed in March last year after a social evening with other crew, but she had rebuffed his requests to pursue a relationship.

The case continues today.

In December, Lieutenant Commander John Alan Jones was convicted of seven charges of acts of indecency for repeatedly spanking a sailor on her bare bottom.

He is appealing against the verdict.