Peeping Tom Defendant Pleads Guilty

A man with more than a decade of sexual assault and burglary charges in three states pleaded guilty Wednesday in Ventura County court to attempted rape and burglary in a series of break-ins in Ventura and Santa Barbara.

Although the guilty plea to five felony charges is expected to bring Hugh McCafferty, 37, of Ventura three to nine years in state prison, victims and authorities say it is little time for a man they believe will attack again.

“At lucid moments, he’d tell you the same thing,” said Det. Martin Altstadt, a Janesville, Wis., police investigator who has been tracking McCafferty’s string of peeping Tom and assault cases for more than 10 years. “He indicated to me that pretty much 24 hours a day his lifestyle is geared toward this kind of activity. We really need to understand what this person is capable of.”

“This doesn’t make sense,” said one of McCafferty’s victims, Tonja Balden, 26, of Ventura, who sat in the front row of court Wednesday. “He needs to be put away for life. He’s already been in prison before, and he’s just not stopping. When he gets out, he’s going to do this again, and he’s already victimized too many people.”

Authorities said McCafferty entered Balden’s Pierpont home in May and, wearing night-vision goggles, watched the woman and her husband sleep. He is believed to have been in the house for up to three hours before Balden’s husband, John, 33, awoke to find the intruder sitting quietly and watching television. Balden tackled McCafferty, who managed to escape.

Prosecutors also charged McCafferty with the sexual assault of a young woman at the Seaward Motel in early April. Police said he broke into the room and tried to rape the woman, who fought off her attacker before he fled.

Local authorities caught up to McCafferty after he was arrested on a burglary charge in Los Angeles. That case is pending.

But McCafferty’s crimes stretch back to 1985, when he was convicted of breaking into a home in Janesville, Wis., and ordering a women to disrobe, Altstadt said. He was also sentenced to nine months in jail on a misdemeanor sexual assault charge in Madison, Wis., authorities said.

By the early 1990s, McCafferty was under surveillance by Janesville police, Altstadt said.

“We followed him for about two weeks, and he was out prowling every night,” Altstadt said.

McCafferty’s pattern was to break into a home and watch as women slept.

“Women would just wake up and find someone in the room standing over them,” the detective said.

On occasion, McCafferty told police he felt the need to “interact” with his victims, Altstadt said, and would touch them or sexually assault them.

He sometimes sent flowers afterward to his victims or called them to describe what he saw or how he touched them, the detective said.

“That’s part of it for him,” Altstadt said. “He really wants to rub their nose in it, make her really feel vulnerable, let her know he is still around.”

Though he was convicted of a series of misdemeanor violations, McCafferty served two three-year terms in state prison after being declared a habitual offender by a Wisconsin court.

McCafferty was in court again in 1997 trying to appeal a conviction stemming from a peeping Tom incident at a Janesville tanning salon. There, salon owner Lori Pennycook discovered McCafferty peeking under tanning booth doors to watch women undress.

While out on bail, McCafferty was arrested on a prowling charge in Indiana, Altstadt said. He bailed out and fled to California, the detective said.

McCafferty’s crimes have outraged Janesville residents, who are angry that a repeat sexual predator is charged with a series of misdemeanors that allow for his release after three-year jail stints.

“To those victims, the three years means nothing,” Altstadt said. “He’ll be out in three years and they’ll still be having nightmares. But that’s the intangible that’s hard to legislate.”

The crimes so outraged Pennycook that she has dedicated a 15-foot billboard outside her business to McCafferty. The board, previously used to advertise salon specials, now carries updates about McCafferty’s various cases and messages to the local district attorney’s office.

After McCafferty’s arrests in California, Pennycook’s sign read, “Jail for Hugh, Justice for Women.”

McCafferty’s crimes in Ventura County were filed as felonies, which Altstadt applauded.

“I think our laws are a little bit different,” Altstadt said. “He was often falling into a lot of gray areas, and we were forced to charge him with misdemeanor cases. . . . I am extremely impressed with the real professional approach that Ventura County and the city of Ventura took. When they called me, they were smart enough to know that this problem was not going to go away.”

Still, Deputy Dist. Atty. Jacqueline Wise-Tilkens said she would have liked to send McCafferty to prison for a much longer term.

“It’s unfortunate,” Wise-Tilkens said. “He deserves very significant punishment for all the victims he’s left behind.”

McCafferty returns to court Aug. 27 for sentencing. After serving time in California, McCafferty will be returned to Wisconsin on charges of skipping bail. He faces up to three years in prison for that offense, authorities said.