A mother has claimed unisex lavatory rules allowed a boy to secretly film female pupils in a secondary school after her “traumatised” daughter found a hidden camera in the bathrooms.
Police have charged a 15-year-old boy after a girl found a phone hidden inside a loo roll holder at a high school in Dundee.
The girl’s mother told the Daily Record that the pupil found hundreds of images of girls naked in changing rooms and using the lavatory in the phone’s camera roll.
Speaking anonymously to the Daily Record, she said her daughter had been left “extremely traumatised” and was refusing to return to school.
It is understood the school has unisex toilets and the mother attacked Dundee City Council over a lack of single-sex facilities, arguing this was putting young girls at risk.
She said: “If it wasn’t for the mixed toilets then this just would never have happened. This is something that a lot of parents have been concerned about for a number of years and since I spoke out about what happened to my daughter, loads of people have come forward and agreed that unisex toilets are a huge issue.
“This boy would simply not have had access to the girls toilets otherwise. I will be looking for assurances from the council that they are going to do something to make sure our children are safe before I even consider sending my daughter back to that school.”
Joanna Cherry called the incident at the school ‘appalling’ on social media – Andrew Milligan/PA
Joanna Cherry KC, a former SNP MP and opponent of Nicola Sturgeon’s self-ID gender reforms, posted on X, formerly Twitter: “Is it too much to hope that this appalling case will sound the death knell for unisex toilets in our schools and mean a return to prioritising the dignity, safety and privacy of girls? The ideologues who pushed this nonsense should hang their heads in shame.”
Meghan Gallacher, a Scottish Tory MP, said: “And yet there will be some who will continue to campaign for unisex toilets in schools.
“They do not create a safe environment for young women and this is just the latest example of why single-sex spaces are of utmost importance.”
But in 2021 the Scottish Government published guidance on supporting transgender pupils in schools that said: “There is no law in Scotland which states that only people assigned male at birth can use men’s toilets and changing rooms, or that only people assigned female can use women’s toilets and changing rooms. This is instead done by social convention.”
The alleged incident in Dundee happened on Tuesday. The girl is said to have noticed a black object in the toilet roll holder, before realising it was a phone.
Meghan Gallacher says mixed gender toilets can make young women feel unsafe – Andrew Milligan/PA
Her mother said she deleted the video of herself, ran back to class and handed the device to her teacher. Police are said to have visited the family home on Tuesday night to take the girl’s DNA so they could exclude it from samples taken from the phone.
The mother said she has contacted the council, but it had refused to discuss the matter further with her owing to it being a live police investigation.
A Dundee city council spokesman said: “It would be inappropriate to comment on an ongoing police matter.” The local authority did not respond to a query as to whether the school had both unisex and single-sex toilets.
A Police Scotland spokesman said: “Around 4.35pm on Tuesday, December 17, 2024 we received a report of voyeurism at a premises in Dundee.
“A 15-year-old male youth was charged in connection and a report will be submitted to the Youth Justice Assessor.”