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Woman who was allegedly filmed in the shower at URI is suing the school

The woman alleges URI “placed her in an unusually vulnerable position” through lax safeguards surrounding its unisex bathrooms.

A sign on the campus of the University of Rhode Island, in South Kingstown, R.I., July 2020. Steven Senne/AP

September 5, 2025

3 minutes to read

A University of Rhode Island student who was allegedly filmed while using her dorm’s unisex shower has filed a federal lawsuit against URI, accusing the school of defaming her after she reported the incident last spring.

The woman, referred to in court documents as “Jane Doe,” also alleged the university was negligent, failed to take adequate security measures, and “placed her in an unusually vulnerable position.”

URI “knew, or through the exercise of reasonable care should have known, that its specific design of unisex restrooms which lacked reasonable privacy or safeguards created an unreasonable risk of harm to the Plaintiff and other students,” the complaint argues.

A spokesperson for URI said the university is unable to comment on pending litigation.

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According to the lawsuit, the woman was a freshman living on campus in Adams Hall when she and her roommate used the dorm’s fourth-floor bathroom on April 29. As she entered, the woman noticed an unfamiliar man walking into the all-gender restroom ahead of her.

Her roommate left the bathroom at some point, and the woman got into the shower. But according to the complaint, she soon noticed that the man had gotten into an adjoining shower. Under the stall divider, she could see he was still wearing his clothes and sneakers.

She looked up and allegedly saw the man holding a cellphone camera over the divider, at which point she “began to yell and confronted the male individual who stated that he was sorry and fled the scene,” according to the lawsuit.

The woman contacted police to report the incident, but she alleges URI failed to inform other students and “provided no safeguards in terms of reasonable notification or other security measures.”

She viewed a police photo lineup on May 1 and pointed out the man she’d allegedly seen, later identified as 30-year-old James Paquette. He’s facing a state-level charge of video voyeurism, though his attorney in that case was not immediately available for comment Friday.

The woman’s lawsuit refers to Paquette by his initials and accuses him of assault, “an uncontested to and depraved invasion of Plaintiff’s right to bodily integrity and right to privacy.”

Following Paquette’s arrest, URI reportedly told local news outlets the incident was isolated, “with one known victim.” One local TV station cited the university and reported that Paquette had no affiliation with the school but “knows one of the victims.”

While the initial news articles didn’t name the woman, she argues she was easily identifiable, and that the information URI provided to the media “was false, misleading and shed [her] in a negative light.”

The lawsuit alleges URI defamed the woman in order to embarrass her and damage her reputation, mislead the public, and deflect responsibility from the school by suggesting she knew Paquette. She filed a Title IX complaint with URI, but the university’s Title IX office determined it had no jurisdiction over the matter and declined to proceed.

The woman said she left her residence hall following the alleged voyeurism incident and has been unable to go back to living on campus. She also purportedly struggled to complete some of the coursework needed to finish out the spring semester and sought several accommodations, according to the complaint.

She said the university notified her on June 5 that she did not meet eligibility requirements to retain her merit-based scholarship for the upcoming semester. She appealed the decision and had her merit aid reinstated, but not before several weeks of “additional stress and anxiety,” according to the lawsuit.

“She’s experienced significant emotional distress with physical symptoms, and that’s a compensable injury, certainly,” said the woman’s attorney, Brie G. Fanning-DiLibero. “And beyond that, I think it’s important to her that the university take really definitive steps to safeguard its students with respect to its all-gender facilities and the dormitories themselves, to monitor who is entering and exiting those facilities.”

The woman’s claims against URI include negligence, negligent infliction of emotional distress, and defamation, among other allegations.

“Her internal efforts to resolve this matter with the university were futile,” Fanning-DiLibero said. “She just wants to ensure that the university takes steps to utilize safeguards to keep this kind of really egregious violation from happening to another student.”