A student at the University of Miami medical school is accused of posting hundreds of photos of his female classmates to various fetish sites, according to a report.
Medical students who discovered their seemingly mundane pics — car selfies, photos with friends at bars, graduations and the beach — with lewd captions on the sites believe their classmate Alex Zhang, 25, is behind the posts, the Miami Herald reported.
Last week, two victims discovered their photos on the sites and filed restraining orders against Zhang.
One woman said she’d been complaining to the university since 2015 about Zhang’s “repeated acts of stalking and harassment,” according to a court filing reviewed by the paper.
Zhang, who has been at the University of Miami’s Miller School of Medicine since 2015, first began harassing her during his freshman year, she said.
In one instance, he allegedly showed up to her exact location after she had posted a video on Snapchat saying she was studying at the school’s library. She eventually blocked him from all social media and school administrators warned him to leave her alone.
In March 2016, Zhang allegedly went to a bar and offered to buy her drinks or give her cash in exchange for seeing her Facebook photos. The next month he was spotted taking unauthorized pictures of her at a birthday at a Wynwood bar and promised to delete them after being confronted.
The university ordered Zhang to stay away from the woman, who filed a sexual harassment complaint against him, but he was allowed to remain at the school, she said.
Earlier this month, a woman found at least eight websites featuring hundreds of photos of fellow UM students, including the ones taken at the Wynwood bar—leading her to connect them to Zhang.
The seemingly innocuous photos were uploaded to bulletin-board type sites for foot fetishes or “creep shots,” in which users sexualize pictures taken in public.
Some of the photos feature faces of the medical students superimposed on porn images.
Another victim said that “over 50 other women from their school are on these sites.”
She believes Zhang still has his university ID that “grants him access to all facilities.”
Miami-Dade courts issued temporary restraining orders mandating Zhang stay away from the women.
The medical school declined to address questions from the paper about Zhang, citing federal laws, and said they’d retained lawyers to help students affected by the posts.
Legal experts say it may be difficult to prove the stomach-churning postings are a crime.
The catch is the images were first posted to social media by the women themselves and it doesn’t appear links were sent to them or their loved ones.
“As a legal matter, it’s unclear where this falls because so much of this behavior is not directed directly at the victim, and therefore may not qualify as stalking and harassment,” said Mary Ann Franks, a University of Miami law professor who heads the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, a nonprofit organization dedicated to combating online abuse.
Zhang did not return the paper’s request for comment.