An American nanny drags her employers to court because they have violated her privacy. It all started with the question from Lauren and Matthew Seltzer from New York to Vanessa Rivas to bring their children to the swimming lessons.
The woman wanted to do so, but stipulated that she would then be allowed to use the bathroom of the family to freshen up afterwards.
For a year everything went well, until in January 2018 she suddenly discovered a small hidden camera in the bathroom where she always undressed and washed. She was surprised, and immediately confronted her employer and told her that she felt very “uncomfortable”, according to the court documents that the newspaper ‘New York Post’ look into. But not before she removed the memory card from the camera.
Hostile
“Immediately she became very defensive and hostile,” she says in the accusation of Rivas. For example, Seltzer would have called the nanny no fewer than 45 and sent 26 messages with the requirement to return her the memory card.
That stimulated Rivas’ curiosity and she looked at what was on it. According to the nanny, the camera would be placed in the bathroom 15 minutes before she arrived, when only she and the children were at home.
Rivas resigned and claimed that when she went with her mother to the apartment of the Seltzers to give her keys, Lauren went through the ribbon and even called the police to get the memory card back. Rivas have delivered it in a local police station.
About a week later, according to the court documents, the Seltzers have called to persuade Rivas to sign a silent contract “so that they could avoid contact with the police”. The nanny refused that, in which Lauren, according to her gossip, spread with other parents and nannies and claimed that Rivas was “irresponsible and crazy”. Rivas would have lost all her work and needed therapy to process the “traumatic experience”.
Cameras
In the US, parents are allowed to install cameras – hidden or not – in their home, but not in the bathroom, on the toilet or in the private rooms of a nanny when she is resident. In May last year, a former director of CNBC television channel was convicted because he was keeping an eye on his nanny in the bathroom of his house with a hidden camera.
