There has been a rash of scandals involving lone perverts in China recently, such as the man who installed a hidden camera in a girl’s dormitory at Shenzhen Polytechnic, and another who hid 20 cameras in a women’s changing room at a gym in Hainan Province. It appears the world’s perverts are getting increasingly tenacious, as another scandal has arisen, this time involving women being photographed while swimming.

According to local television, last weekend a number of women were secretly photographed with iPhones at a swimming pool in Guangzhou. A women identified as Ah Zhu was swimming in the pool at The People’s Municipal Fitness Center in the city’s Yuexiu District around 7.30 in the evening when she saw three men near her with mobile phones. She thought it odd that they would have phones near a swimming pool, and made a mental note of the men’s appearances. The men all had non-local accents, she told 163 news.

One of the men, very tall, thin and thought to be in his twenties, sat by the pool playing with his phone, while the other two men would swim in the water with their iPhones, which had waterproof jackets. The men would periodically get together to look at each other’s screens, then laugh at what they saw.

Ah Zhu observed them for some time and noticed they would go under water to take photographs any time a female entered the pool, this included little girls and middle-aged women. She later told her boyfriend Ah Qiang who said that if he had been there, he would have started a fight. Concerned that the men might upload the photographs to a pornographic website, Qiang called for the health center to ban mobile phones from the pool area.

While the health center has yet to introduce a ban, according to lawyer Huang Zhiyong, it is a criminal offense to publish somebody’s picture on a pornographic website without their permission. In Huang’s opinion, the health center should take the necessary steps to protect the privacy of swimmers, and ensure such an offence isn’t committed again.