Four of the women recorded during their "most private moments" in the bathroom of a Cobb County salon have filed lawsuits seeking damages from the convicted sex offender responsible — their former employer.
Mark Allen Storch, 56, pleaded guilty in September to 25 counts of invasion of privacy and was sentenced to serve five years in prison. The charges stemmed from incidents in the summer of 2012 in which Storch — the owner of Salon Avenue Suites locations on Sandy Plains Road in east Cobb and on Loring Road in Kennesaw — hid video cameras in the salons to spy on and record women in "various stages of undress."
Four of the women, all salon employees, filed civil lawsuits last week against Storch, as well as the salon company and its founder, Juliette Proenza Colon. The suits ask for damages and allege invasion of privacy, negligence, libel and emotional distress, as well as racketeering.
“… Cobb County police obtained from Defendant Storch’s computer equipment and hard drives stored images and live video footage of at least six different women in various stages of undress and actively engaging in their most private moments in the ladies restroom on the premises of Salon Avenue Suites,” one suit said.
The defendants are entitled to recover racketeering damages, the suits claim, because of Storch’s “systemic and willful acts of surreptitiously” obtaining those images.
Online prison records show Storch has now served time in the state prison system on four occasions since 1991.
Details of the other previous cases were unclear Tuesday, but Storch was released from prison in 2008 after serving four years for a conviction on charges including aggravated assault with intent to rape. Upon being released, he was added to Georgia’s sex offender registry.
The suits filed last week claim Colon, the salon chain owner, was negligent in employing “a person who she knew was a convicted sexual predator.”
Atlanta firm Kaufman Law is representing all four plaintiffs. Cindy Poe, a representative of the firm, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the women are seeking “whatever measure of damages is awarded by the enlightened conscience of a fair and impartial jury.”
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