I was in a clothing store in Key West Shopping Centre and chose a pair of jeans to try on. On approaching the fitting rooms in the store, I waited until one of the staff members acknowledged me before proceeding into the rooms.
The reason for this was that there were two lady staff members helping customers at the tills and there were no staff members controlling the fitting rooms.
Once one of the staff members acknowledged that I had one pair of jeans to try on, I went on in. I could hear a mother and son in the cubicle next to me, and they left the fitting rooms soon after I had put on the jeans.
This was when I noticed a male standing outside my cubicle door. I thought perhaps he was waiting for his child or someone. As soon as I took off the jeans I noticed the same male’s shoes outside my cubicle again. As I bent down to check under the door, the man quickly removed his cellphone with which he had been taking pictures of me in my underwear.
Outraged, I quickly changed and ran out to try and catch the culprit by identifying his shoes. I reported this to the two ladies at the counters and told them that they needed someone to control the fitting rooms.
I felt very violated and was outraged that there was no form of control. In today’s society, worse could have taken place and no-one would have known anything because of the lack of control.
I am a white female in my twenties, and this culprit happened to be a white male. This could be happening to any female of any age.
I am letting you know so that the stores can be aware of what is going on. There are some sick people and who knows what they will do next.
* Marketing Manager, Melissa Greyling responds on behalf of Key West:
Key West Shopping Center is aware of the incident and has made contact with the customer. We have implemented the following:
• All tenants were informed of the incident and urged to be on the lookout for “peeping Toms” especially at the dressing rooms.
• We have extracted all CCTV footage from that day and time, and hope to identify the culprit.
• Jaclyn Currin was contacted and we have requested her to come in and identity the culprit.
• Edcon (store’s head office) was informed of the incident and they provided the following feedback: Edcon is aware of the incident that occurred at the store in Key West. Edcon has contacted the affected customer and apologised for the unfortunate incident. The customer was thanked for raising the issue and advised of additional security measures that have been put in place, in this store, in order to prevent an incident of this nature happening again. Edcon is continuing to invest in measures for a safe and pleasant shopping experience for all our customers.
