{"id":360294,"date":"2026-09-30T00:42:48","date_gmt":"2026-09-30T00:42:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/360294\/"},"modified":"2026-09-30T00:42:48","modified_gmt":"2026-09-30T00:42:48","slug":"manhattan-beach-therapist-who-recorded-clients-in-bathroom-with-hidden-camera-sentenced-to-16-years-daily-breeze","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/360294\/","title":{"rendered":"Manhattan Beach therapist who recorded clients in bathroom with hidden camera sentenced to 16 years \u2013 Daily Breeze"},"content":{"rendered":"

A South Bay therapist has been sentenced to more than 16 years in federal prison for installing a hidden camera in a bathroom at his workplace and recording women and girls, including some of his clients, according to the federal prosecutors.<\/p>\n

Joseph Toews, 31, a Manhattan Beach family therapist, pleaded guilty to one count of producing child pornography in June and was sentenced on Tuesday, Sept. 29.<\/p>\n

In January 2023, Toews placed a camera in his office building\u2019s bathroom, recording women and girls, including some therapy clients, according to the Department of Justice. He recorded at least 11 videos involving minors, prosecutors said.<\/p>\n

The victims were between the ages of 8 and 12, according to a release from the FBI<\/a> at the time of his arrest.<\/p>\n

\u201cHis conduct was not a spur of the moment happening,\u201d according to a prosecution sentencing memorandum. \u201c[Toews] had been stockpiling CSAM [child sexual abuse material] prior to his decision to create CSAM of his own.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a nearly three-year period from early 2023 to late 2025, Toews admitted to, as a part of his plea agreement, purchasing child sexual abuse material from dark net online video stores, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.<\/p>\n

In addition to his prison sentence, Toews was fined $50,000, ordered to pay a special assessment of $55,000 and will be on supervised release for 25 years following his release.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A South Bay therapist has been sentenced to more than 16 years in federal prison for installing a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":360295,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[9965,2136,303,266,9966,75,9967,84,83,9,24,12,63,27],"class_list":["post-360294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-beach-cities","tag-california","tag-crime","tag-crime-and-public-safety","tag-los-angeles-county","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-beach","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-news","tag-nyc","tag-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=360294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360294\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/360295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=360294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=360294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=360294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}