Originally published 2020-12-03.
In November 2019 police in Odesa, Ukraine, opened a criminal investigation after a woman found a video of her own gynaecological examination on a pornography website. A hidden camera was discovered in the private ultrasound office where she had been examined, and the gynaecologist who rented it was questioned. He denied installing the camera or selling any footage, was never detained, and in May 2020 prosecutors closed the case after an expert examination concluded that the recordings did not legally count as pornography.
The story drew international attention because it touches one of the most vulnerable situations a patient can be in. It also shows how a case can stall when the law used to investigate it does not quite fit the harm. Here is what was reported, how the investigation ended, and what patients can do to protect themselves.
What happened in Odesa
The office was on the grounds of the Odesa Regional Oncology Dispensary, a state cancer centre, but it was not run by the dispensary. The doctor, reported in Ukrainian media as Vyacheslav Tripolko, had rented a room there since 2017 and carried out ultrasound and gynaecological examinations independently.
According to the local news site Dumskaya and the national outlet NV, recordings of patients made without their knowledge were posted on an adult website. Later reports said the videos had appeared online from early 2018 until April 2019, before the case became public in November 2019. Police seized phones, a laptop and several concealed cameras, including some disguised as key fobs, and sent the equipment for expert examination.
The dispensary moved quickly to distance itself. Its chief physician, Oleh Lukianchuk, said the office was a private practice using rented space and that the doctor had no working relationship with the hospital’s staff. Speaking to reporters, he described his first reaction: “At first, I thought it was someone’s evil joke.” He called the filming a violation of medical ethics, and the lease was later reported to have been terminated.
The doctor’s denial
The gynaecologist denied knowing about the camera and suggested that rival doctors might have planted it to damage his reputation. He was questioned but not detained, and English-language reports at the time said he had been barred from carrying out examinations while the investigation continued. At least one patient defended him publicly, telling reporters that anyone could have installed the device and that his guilt would need to be proved.
That point matters. Questioning by police is not a finding of guilt, and in this case nobody was ever formally served with a notice of suspicion, the step in Ukrainian procedure that roughly corresponds to being named as a suspect. Anyone reading about the case should keep that distinction in mind.
Why the investigation was closed
Police opened the case under Article 301 of Ukraine’s Criminal Code, which deals with producing, storing, selling or distributing pornographic material. That choice turned out to be decisive. In May 2020, a source in the Odesa regional prosecutor’s office told the news agency UNIAN that the case had been closed for lack of the elements of a crime, because an expert examination had found that the camera footage was not pornography.
Put simply, a clinical examination filmed without consent is a grave intrusion into privacy, but under the wording of that particular article it was not judged to be pornographic material. Reports of the closure did not say whether investigators pursued any other offence, such as one covering privacy or the illegal collection of personal information. A defence motion in a district court also argued that expert reviews had found no proof the seized equipment was used for crime; the court refused to return it.
Ukrainian and international readers were left with an uncomfortable result: patients had been recorded in an examination room, the videos had circulated online, and no one was held responsible.
Some English-language reports that circulated in late 2020 still described the investigation as open, months after prosecutors had closed it.
A wider problem: secret filming and image abuse
Hidden-camera abuse is not unique to Ukraine. South Korea is the best-documented example. There, secretly filmed intimate images are known as molka, and reports to police rose from roughly 1,100–1,400 a year in 2010–2011 to about 6,800 in 2018 (a figure sometimes rounded down to 6,000). In 2018 tens of thousands of women joined monthly protests in Seoul under the slogan “My life is not your porn”, and the Seoul city government announced that 8,000 employees would check its public toilets for cameras daily.
The Korean experience also shows the limits of enforcement. Taking or distributing such footage can be punished there with up to five years in prison, yet campaigners pointed out that only a small share of those tried between 2012 and 2017 received prison sentences. Laws that are vague, or that focus on whether material is pornographic rather than on consent, tend to leave victims without redress, which is very close to what happened in Odesa.
Many countries have responded by writing specific offences for voyeurism and for sharing intimate images without consent, so that the key question becomes whether the person agreed to be filmed, not how the footage is classified.
What patients can do
Cases like this are rare, and most clinics take privacy seriously. Still, a few habits help anyone who is about to have an intimate examination:
- Ask who will be present. You can ask for a chaperone, such as a nurse or someone you trust, during any intimate examination. In many health systems this is standard practice.
- Ask about recording. Some examinations, such as certain ultrasounds, are recorded for medical records. You have the right to know whether anything is being recorded, why, and who will see it.
- Check where you are being seen. A private practice renting space in a hospital may not be supervised by that hospital. It is reasonable to ask who runs the service and who to contact with a complaint.
- Trust your instincts. If something about a room or a procedure feels wrong, you can stop and ask questions or leave.
If you discover that intimate images of you have been posted online, save the links and screenshots as evidence without sharing them further, report the content to the website, and report the matter to the police. Most major platforms have forms for removing non-consensual intimate content, and in many countries there are specialist helplines that can help with takedowns. Where the recording happened in a medical setting, a complaint to the relevant medical licensing body is also appropriate. If the experience has left you distressed, talk to a doctor you trust or a counsellor.
Why this case still matters
The Odesa case is a reminder that privacy in medicine depends on more than individual honesty. It depends on clear rules about who supervises rented clinical spaces, on laws that treat recording without consent as a crime in itself, and on investigators having the right tools to follow the money and the devices. When any of those links is missing, people who were harmed can end up with no answer at all.
It is also a reminder for readers. The victims here were real patients. The respectful response is not to look for the footage or pass it on, but to support stronger protections so that an examination room is always a safe place.
Sources: NV.ua, 27 November 2019 (in Ukrainian); Censor.net via UNIAN, 8 May 2020: case closed (in Ukrainian); iHeartIntelligence (English report, via Unilad); Wikipedia: Molka (spy-cam crime in South Korea). Image: East2West News.
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