NW Bend hidden-camera video ‘peeper’ pleads guilty

A 60-year-old Tualatin man, convicted earlier this year of placing a hidden video camera in a Sherwood Starbucks bathroom, pleaded guilty Friday in Bend to 25 invasion of privacy charges for using a similar device – disguised as an AC adapter — in the bathroom of his family’s vacation-rental home in Bend’s NorthWest Crossing neighborhood, prosecutors said.

Richard Eugene Ipsen apologized to the three adult victims, related by marriage, in the NW Crossing incident before Deschutes County Circuit Judge Barbara Haslinger.

The judge tacked another week of jail time and more conditions onto the one-year sentence imposed after his conviction in Washington County last spring, said Deputy District Attorney Brigid Turner.

Ipsen pleaded guilty to the 25 misdemeanor counts of invasion of privacy in the plea agreement, while seven counts of attempted invasion of privacy were dismissed. The 25 counts each involved a different recording taken by the device, Turner said.

After Sherwood police found the camera in June of last year, Bend police raided a house belonging to the Ipsen Family Trust on Northwest Lolo Drive. A search warrant affidavit said police were able to match photos from the camera to the home’s guest bathroom.

The judge matched the Washington County judge’s imposition of five years of supervised probation, Turner said. Ipsen is required to get a psych-sexual evaluation and then complete any recommended sex offender treatment.

Last month, the Bend victims requested that the case be dismissed due to a civil compromise reached with Ipsen, Turner said. But the prosecutor said she objected to the motion, and Judge Wells Ashby denied the request.

Turner noted that Ipsen’s attorney, Stephen Houze of Portland, mentioned in court Friday that “there was a substantial civil settlement” reached in the case.

Once released from the Washington County Jail in Hillsboro, Ipsen will not be allowed to possess any type of recording device or have any contact with the victims, under conditions of his supervised probation, Turner said.

The prosecutor thanked the Bend Police Department, which executed the search warrant on the NW Bend home, for “a very thorough investigation” that led to Friday’s guilty pleas and sentencing.