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" &amp;quot;He saw us through the hotel window.&amp;quot;   For the annual getaway she enjoys with her husband, Jo Castello, 34, had packed her best lingerie. &amp;quot;Let me put it this way: When we&amp;#039;re on vacation, I don&amp;#039;t sleep in T-shirts,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;I try to liven things up a little.&amp;quot; Revving up the romance quotient even more, the couple had been given a little, out-of-the-way bungalow at their Club Med resort in Mexico. &amp;quot;I loved it because it was so secluded,&amp;quot; says Jo. &amp;quot;We were having a really hot time together.&amp;quot;  For a few nights in a row, they&amp;#039;d heard strange noises coming from outside their room. But while Jo&amp;#039;s husband got up to look out the window, with just a towel wrapped around his waist, Jo shrugged it off, figuring it was local animal sounds they weren&amp;#039;t familiar with. &amp;quot;Oh, come back to bed,&amp;quot; she told him. &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;re just being paranoid.&amp;quot; There was one other small problem: The wooden slats over the window didn&amp;#039;t quite close all the way. &amp;quot;But hey, what did we care?&amp;quot; says Jo. &amp;quot;We were on vacation!&amp;quot;   But care they soon did. About halfway into their stay, the couple&amp;#039;s laid-back attitude was shattered for good when they returned to their bungalow from a romantic late-night stargazing and found security guards surrounding it. The head guard pointed to a man -- an average-looking American wearing khakis and a white polo shirt who was also a guest at the resort -- and said they had caught him staring into the Castellos&amp;#039; window. &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s when it hit me,&amp;quot; Jo says. &amp;quot;The noises: It was him watching us.&amp;quot; Her husband looked around the bungalow and found dozens of cigarette butts on the ground right under their window. &amp;quot;I visualized every sexy position we&amp;#039;d tried over the past three days and thought, Oh, my God. What did he see us doing while he was standing out there smoking?&amp;quot;  Jo wanted the man gone that second, but because nothing in their room had been disturbed, the guards just escorted him back to his room. Still, Jo was confident the perpetrator would get kicked out the next day, once the manager of the resort heard the story. But when the Castellos and the head security guard met with the manager the next morning, the woman explained that she couldn&amp;#039;t oust their peeper unless the Castellos pressed charges, sentencing the man to a precarious future. (Another American, arrested three years before on a minor marijuana charge, was still languishing in a Mexican jail.)  In the end, the Castellos decided not to press charges, and the man with the roving eyes was left to enjoy the rest of his stay. They switched rooms -- to one on the third floor, where no one could see in -- but their vacation was ruined. Jo spent the last few days covered up and didn&amp;#039;t go anywhere without her husband. &amp;quot;It was so creepy when we&amp;#039;d run into this crazy guy,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;He was enjoying himself as if nothing had happened.&amp;quot; And while Jo felt much better once she got back to the States, she admits that her days of feeling that carefree are over. Gina Bell, a 36-year-old preschool teacher, was too preoccupied with her 13-month-old kid squirming around in her arms that hot afternoon three years ago to notice much else. As she waited in line for the baby slide at a carnival up the street from her home, her husband went to buy a raffle ticket.  When he glanced over at his wife, he noticed something odd about the guy in line behind her. So he quickly rejoined her, whispering in her ear, &amp;quot;The guy behind you looks strange.&amp;quot;   When she looked behind her, she saw a gym bag on the ground next to the man -- with a video-camera lens sticking out of it! &amp;quot;He&amp;#039;d been kind of hovering around me, and I realized in a flash that he&amp;#039;d been videotaping up my dress,&amp;quot; says Gina. &amp;quot;And I said that out loud, so everyone could hear.&amp;quot; The voyeur bolted and threw his camera in the bushes as he left the fairgrounds. The Bells reported the incident to the police, who recovered the camera and said they had received other similar reports.  When the Bells got home that evening, Gina&amp;#039;s anger turned to fear. &amp;quot;I thought, What if he was a stalker? I used to take my baby out for a walk every night, but I stopped doing that. I stayed locked inside.&amp;quot; But unlike many Peeping Toms, Gina&amp;#039;s was eventually caught and prosecuted: He had unwittingly taped himself while filming 13 other women that day.  He was charged only with possession of criminal tools and with voyeurism, because at the time, taping someone for lewd purposes wasn&amp;#039;t illegal in Ohio. He was sentenced to 10 days in jail, ordered to spend 30 days in home detention and to serve 200 hours of community service, and forced to enroll in a therapy program. Gina later testified in front of the Ohio state legislature, which in response made taking pictures of unsuspecting people for sexual gratification a crime.  Gina&amp;#039;s was a small but important victory. Capturing women&amp;#039;s bras, panties and bare bottoms on tape has become a booming business, driven by Internet sites that pay big money for video footage taken up women&amp;#039;s skirts and in public rest rooms and changing rooms. Now there&amp;#039;s a law on the record in Ohio that&amp;#039;ll help stop it. While having lunch at a Burger King with her 9-year-old daughter one Friday, Denise Rhoads made a pit stop at the ladies&amp;#039; room. And then it happened. As Denise, a 38-year-old stay-at-home mom, reached over for some toilet paper, she says she spotted an eyeball staring back at her from a two-and-a-half-inch hole in the wall.  &amp;quot;At first I was too stunned to move and thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. But then I snapped out of it and realized that whoever was on the other side of the wall had a dead-on view of my bare behind!&amp;quot;  Denise yanked up her pants and marched into the men&amp;#039;s room next door. &amp;quot;I was so mad, I shook,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;I was on automatic.&amp;quot; When she pulled open the door, she came face-to-face with a &amp;quot;very creepy-looking guy&amp;quot; in his early 30s wearing a Burger King visor and shirt. &amp;quot;I started swearing at him, calling him a pervert,&amp;quot; she says. He avoided her eyes and scuttled into the kitchen. Denise immediately told her story to the manager, who was female, assuming that the woman would be horrified.  She couldn&amp;#039;t have been more mistaken.  &amp;quot;The manager just said, &amp;#039;Oh, that&amp;#039;s a plumbing hole,&amp;#039;&amp;quot; Denise says. &amp;quot;She didn&amp;#039;t even ask me which employee it was!&amp;quot; Even worse, when Denise called the police and met them at the fast-food joint later that afternoon, she got the same &amp;quot;So what?&amp;quot; attitude. &amp;quot;They just laughed, like it was a boys-will-be-boys situation,&amp;quot; says Denise. &amp;quot;Their reaction made the ordeal 10 times more humiliating. I was outraged!&amp;quot;  But she wasn&amp;#039;t about to let it go. Denise got a lawyer, sued and after a three-year court battle, received a mixed result. Though a jury found that the Burger King franchisee was negligent, Denise was not able to convince them that anyone was peeping at her, and the company wasn&amp;#039;t ordered to pay any damages, leaving Denise with a hefty bill for her legal fees. The employee has since started working at another restaurant in the neighborhood, one that Denise refuses to set foot in.  The best way to deter skeevy snoops? Paying attention.  Women have their guard up when they&amp;#039;re walking down an empty street alone at night, but these predators strike most often in crowded public areas, where you&amp;#039;re less likely to scrutinize others. &amp;quot;Just looking to see what&amp;#039;s going on around you is often enough to make perverts move on to easier prey,&amp;quot; says Chris McGoey, a security expert in California and creator of the Website www.crimedoctor.com. Other easy ways to keep unwanted eyes off you:   In fitting rooms and bathrooms Choose stalls with the barest ceilings possible -- no vents, holes or other spaces. If you have to use a booth with a hole or gap in its walls or ceiling, try to block the opening with tissue paper: It takes a space only the width of a pencil to give a snoop a great view.  In shopping malls Watch out for men lingering near the tops or bottoms of stairs or escalators, where they have a prime viewing angle, and pay attention in stores with more than one level -- say, a mezzanine -- for the same reason.  In line or in a crowd If a man has been hovering near you, check to see if he has a duffel bag -- an easy way for &amp;quot;upskirt&amp;quot; tapers to catch a video view of your undergarments. Try leading him somewhere men don&amp;#039;t go, such as a lingerie shop. If he continues to follow you, alert security.   In hotels  Be sure that your curtains or blinds close fully and avoid rooms that are on the ground level or near an elevator or staircase, since would-be spies prefer rooms with easy access to escape routes.   In your home  Try this one night: Turn on all your lights, close your curtains and blinds, walk outside and try to look in your own windows. If you can see anything, consider replacing vertical blinds or sheer curtains with less transparent window coverings. If you live in a house and find piles of cigarette butts, trampled shrubbery or muddy footprints underneath windows, you may have uninvited guests. In apartments, keep an eye out for holes in walls or ceilings. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.redbookmag.com/body/health-fitness/advice/a166/watching-you-yl/>