‘Peeping Tom’ sentenced to three years in prison after pleading guilty to assault, other charges

An El Paso “Peeping Tom” was sentenced to three years in prison Wednesday.

Twenty-five year-old Robert Castillo pleaded guilty to assaulting a woman with a knife, improperly recording a woman in a sexual nature and to assaulting an EMT.

Castillo was 20 when he committed the crimes. He cried for more than an hour as he sat and waited to be sentenced.

The first charge was for threatening a woman with a knife at Paul Harvey Park, on the West Side. He demanded she expose her breasts and attacked her before she managed to get away.

In January 2010, Castillo secretly videotaped a woman through her bathroom window. Nine months later, he emailed her compromising pictures of herself and a message that read: “Send pictures of yourself in a short skirt and don’t get anyone involved.”

He was also sentenced for assaulting an El Paso paramedic in 2008.

Castillo spoke to the court, saying: “I want to make an apology to any victims. I was a very different person. Sorry to their husbands and their kids. It was wrong what I did. I just want to apologize sincerely from the depths of my heart.”

One of Castillo’s victims, the woman he photographed and emailed, gave the court a 15 minute victim’s impact statement. Afterward, she spoke only with ABC-7, asking not to be identified:

“It’s just frustrating that its only three years because you know we’ve been waiting five years,” she said. “So he’s had his life for five years and mine, mine changed. What the punishment should be should be a lot longer because it wasn’t just about video taping somebody, it was an intrusion into my life and it just changed everything. For the rest of my life, I’m different, my family’s different, I’m not the same person. I don’t know if I’ll ever feel safe.”

She added that even though it took five years, she’s glad she followed through with prosecution of Castillo, in hopes he never hurts anyone again.