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Topless woman chases ‘peeping tom’ through store

Shoppers at a Kansas department store got quite the sight this week when a topless woman was spotted chasing a man from the dressing room.

Jeanne Ouellette says she was trying on bras in the Lenexa, Kan., Khol's store when she spotted a man's hand holding a cell phone under her dressing room door.

"I followed him. I shouted, 'Stop! Help me!' I just screamed and chased him topless through the store," she tells local news station KCTV. "I know I shouldn't be chasing someone. I was just enraged."

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Ouellette chased the man all the way to store's entrance before common sense kicked in, and she realized it was too late.

"At that point, I just started crying because I was so upset that he was getting away. When you feel violated, what you really want is for justice to be done," she says, noting that she simply wanted to get rid of the footage on the phone.

Lucky for her though, other shoppers continued the chase and alerted police, who caught the man three blocks away and confiscated the cell phone used to record Ouellette.

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“She ran topless after the guy,” a police officer tells The Kansas City Star. “She definitely got the attention of other shoppers.”

On Tuesday, the alleged peeping tom, 35-year-old Jeremy F. Bradley, was charged with breach of privacy, which is considered a misdemeanour. He could face up to a year in jail and receive a $2,500 fine, if convicted.

Ouellette tells KCTV that the penalty doesn't match the violation she feels.

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"He is clearly mentally ill, and he clearly needs treatment and he needs to go into the system... so he can get his treatment," she says.

It's not uncommon for peeping toms to be charged with misdemeanours in the U.S. and Canada.

An exception was in 2008, when an alleged peeping tom in Saanich, B.C., was caught for a break and enter and assault, which led police to find his 14-year collection of videotapes that captured women undressing through windows. Along with his break and enter and assault charges, he was also charged with voyeurism.

Eric Beauregard, a criminology professor at Simon Fraser University, says one theory is that peeping toms progress to more serious offenses, such as unwanted touching or rape.