She yelled when a student at Canyon Academy grabbed a strange man’s hand and reached out of the bathroom stall to try to record her on his phone.
Then, the two-year student began recording him.
“Why do you want to record?” the student said in a video posted online when she faced the man wearing black and hiding his face with a jacket. “No, catch it! What the hell is it!”
Video released earlier this week depicts the latest in at least three similar incidents reported on the Santa Clarita campus over the past year. In response to one of the incidents, school officials alerted students on March 6, urging them to report any similar circumstances.
“We take the safety of students seriously, and our campus safety officials have briefed on what has happened and are alert to future events,” said school spokesman Eric Harnish.
The black man’s video was released earlier this week Instagram. The recorded student told The Times that the episode took place in October, but she was not published at the time because police and campus officials asked her not to do so to avoid “tip” the suspect. She finally posted a video after learning about two similar incidents reported on campus over the past year.
Canyon College female bathroom male invader student video. (@protectthegirlss)
The student requested not to be identified, he said, the incident scared her and avoided the campus bathroom. She was worried that more victims might be there.
On October 22, she saw a person in one of the stalls when she walked into the bathroom of the Aliso Lab building, but she never thought it might be a man trying to document her.
She was using the bathroom when she saw a hand reaching under the stall and aiming the phone camera at the back of her – two stalls from the suspect.
“I was frightened,” she said. “I yelled, ‘What the hell’ and they pulled the phone back.”
She walked out and pulled out her phone, hoping to provide the police with the man’s face. She said she pulled the man’s jacket, but he pushed her when he tried to pull the door open.
“He was pushing me hard,” she said. “He put his shoulder on me and pushed me away.”
In the video, the student is seen trying to stop the man from leaving the bathroom, pulling his jacket, trying to expose his face, but the man pushes her and sees her crossing the campus and reaching a parking lot.
The student said she tried to chase him but lost him.
The student said she was recently informed of two other similar incidents, including an episode earlier this month. School officials confirmed that a third incident was reported on April 23.
Now, she said, she is worried that other students may be victimized in the same way.
School officials alerted students about the March 4 incident, and a female student said she also saw a man filming videos in the bathroom with a phone under the stall. According to school email, the incident occurred at 12:20 p.m. in the second floor bathroom in Hasley Hall.
The victim in the incident was a sophomore student who asked not to be identified, told The Times that she also saw someone in a disabled stall in the women’s bathroom when she entered and thought it was another female student.
When she uses the bathroom, a group of students come in, use the bathroom and leave. When the room quieted down, she wondered if she was alone, peeped into her stall to see if the others were occupied.
“I looked down and saw a man lying down and his camera pointed at me,” she said.
She said that if she hadn’t peeked, the man wouldn’t have been seen, but his phone pointed clearly at her.
She said: “I started screaming and I was frightened.
The man ran out of the bathroom and when she grabbed her own thing and chased him, she said he was gone.
She said she went to campus to report the incident safely. After posting a video of the October incident on Thursday, she said she contacted the sheriff’s department and published a police report.
She said she did not submit it in advance because she believed campus safety would contact law enforcement.
She said she has been afraid to go to the campus bathroom herself since then.
A school spokesperson confirmed that the three incidents had been reported to school officials.
However, in the March incident, the victim could not clearly see the suspect.
“This incident was also reported to campus safety, and we once again reminded what happened on campus,” Harnish said in an email. “The victim later submitted a report to the Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Station.”
The student who recorded the October episode said that the day after the incident, she drove to the gas station and bought pepper spray for the first time.
She can be seen everywhere now.
“I’m scared every day,” she said. “I can’t fall asleep for a month, I can’t be straightforward. I’ve lost all my sense of self. It’s so scary.”
She said she had received news from other students since she posted the video, telling her they were not aware of any incidents.
“Nothing physically hurts me, but mentally, it’s something I carry.”
