A Manhattan boutique owner and her daughter say they got more than they bargained for when they used an H&M dressing room to try on lingerie — they were videotaped by a camera-wielding perv who store employees let get away, a new lawsuit claims.
Zia Ziprin, 51, of the Lower East Side haven Girls Love Shoes and daughter Aishling Labat, 23, were shopping at the discount fashion giant’s Fifth Avenue Flatiron store in January 2010.
The women were “in a state of undress within the dressing room stall” on the second floor when the unidentified man in an adjoining stall filmed them “with a camera or video camera,” according to the suit, filed in Manhattan Supreme Court.
PATRICK MCMULLAN/PatrickMcMullan.com
Zia Ziprin and Aishling Labat
As Labat was changing into the negligee, “She saw there was something above the dressing room. She thought it was a security camera, but when she reached up there was nothing there,” her attorney, Ross Rothenberg told The Post. “She started screaming and he ran from the second story down to the first” and escaped, the lawyer said.
“Their assumption is that somewhere on the Internet is videos of both of them,” semi-naked, Rothenberg said, adding that they haven’t been able to track down the smut.
Both Ziprin and Labat “pleaded with H&M’s security and store personnel to stop [the man] from leaving the store ...with the compromising video and photographs,” the suit says. Ziprin, a curvy blonde, “begged for help from security and/or store personnel, who ignored her request.”
Rothenberg said police obtained security footage of the creep and investigated the incident but never caught him.
The women want unspecified damages for the “embarrassment, humiliation, fear, panic, torment” they suffered, the suit says.
The suit charges the store with building flimsy, unisex dressing rooms that allow easy accesses to eavesdroppers and peeping toms.
An H&M spokeswoman said the company hasn’t seen the suit, but its policy is to decline comment on legal matters.
Additional reporting by Sabrina Ford and Dana Sauchelli
Mother & daughter victim of peeping Tom at H&M -- and employees let him get away, lawsuit claims
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Mother & daughter victim of peeping Tom at H&M -- and employees let him get away, lawsuit claims
