61 victims in 9 months: 39-year-old Indian man sent to jail in Australia, diagnosed with voyeuristic disorder

39-year-old Sumit Satish Rastogi, an Indian man in Adelaide, Australia, has been sentenced to 13 years and 10 months behind bars after pleading guilty to 97 offences, including multiple charges of aggravated indecent assault and indecent filming that involved 61 victims.

Rastogi was working at a massage parlor though he was not qualified for the job. And he committed the offences between October 2021 and July 2022 when he was arrested.

According to ABC News, Judge Carmen Matteo detailed each of the 97 offences committed by Rastogi over nine months during the sentencing. "In one way or another, you violated 61 women who were trusting, unsuspecting and entitled to safety, respect and dignity," she said.

"You abused their trust and treated them with an utter lack of respect and dignity when you touched them sexually and or took images which intentionally captured parts of their body which was their right to keep private and unexposed.

"Your offending conduct was regular and, at times, prolific."

Offence worsened with confidence

The judge noted that Rastogi's offence started to worsen as he was becoming confident in filming women. "All of your conduct in indecently assaulting your victims was serious, but it became particularly so once you developed confidence to unjustifiably interfere with their underwear to access them directly," she said.

"Every invasive image you took involved a gross breach of trust and was entirely unacceptably exploitative and when you couple that conduct with physical sexual interference, your conduct took on another level of depravity and insult to your victims.

"By June and July 2022, I would characterise your offending against client victims as being out of control and showing no signs of restraint until the moment you got caught."

The judge said she took into consideration the diagnosis of Rastogi's psychiatrist that he had voyeuristic disorder. "He is of the opinion you meet the diagnostic criteria for voyeuristic disorder because over a period of six months you experienced concurrent and intense sexual arousal from observing unsuspecting semi-naked women," she said.

"[He] says that your voyeuristic disorder is a clinically plausible explanation for your offending behaviour but that it does not absolve you of responsibility for your conduct. There is no suggestion that you were unable to control your conduct or that you did not know the wrongfulness of it," the judge said.

Rastogi will be deported from Australia once he has served the entirety of his sentence.