Sleeping In The Attic

An attorney has been disbarred in Maryland in the wake of his “Peeping Tom” conviction.

The case was argued in the Court of Appeals yesterday.

HuffPost had this story

A peeping Tom with a law degree and advanced degrees from Harvard and MIT has pleaded guilty to secretly taping his female tenants having sex. His spying was discovered, in part, thanks to Cosmopolitan Magazine.

Dennis Alan Van Dusen, 64, recorded three women who rented rooms in his house, in the tony D.C. suburb of Chevy Chase, Md., with cameras he installed in smoke detectors above their beds…

According to the ABA Journal, Van Dusen charged below-market rents of less than $600. The average rent surrounding the house on 6910 Ridgewood Ave. is $2,000. In October, 2007 the property was assessed at $1,133,092.

And from the Washington Post on his sentencing

A Chevy Chase landlord who hid tiny video cameras in his tenants’ bedrooms received no jail time Tuesday from a judge who said psychiatric treatment is called for more than time behind bars.

“We have a gentleman here who, I guess, I can only characterize as being disturbed or sick, and that’s been confirmed by many sources,” Montgomery County Circuit Court Judge Paul H. Weinstein said Tuesday.

Weinstein ordered the landlord, Dennis Van Dusen, 64, to continue psychotherapy, pay a $2,500 fine and serve five years of probation. The sentence came moments after Van Dusen — a lawyer with two master’s degrees from Harvard University — offered reasons for his bizarre behavior. The troubles can be traced to his childhood, according to his attorney, who said Van Dusen’s mother was such a hoarder that he had to sleep in the attic.

The court’s order indicates that a full opinion will follow.

A civil suit resulted in a million dollar judgment, according to Gazette.net.  (Mike Frisch)