A woman who was filmed naked and unconscious by a man she did not know in a London hotel room won a five-year legal battle on Friday after he pleaded guilty under new rules on voyeurism.

People dine in an outdoor area of a restaurant in London, Britain, August 4. Photo: Xinhua

Emily Hunt woke up next to a man she did not recognize in a hotel room in May 2015 and feared she had been drugged but was told by prosecutors that there was no realistic prospect of convicting the man on any form of assault on the evidence. But when Hunt realized a year later that the man had filmed her as she slept, she embarked on a public campaign for justice, and a landmark court ruling on voyeurism in 2020 led to an arrest.

Christopher Killick, 40, pleaded guilty to voyeurism on Friday and will be sentenced on September 4, the Crown Prosecution Service said, with the charge carrying a maximum jail term of 26 weeks.

"It has been an incredible long and difficult five-year journey to get here, but I could not be happier that justice has finally been served," Hunt, 41, a mother-of-one, told Reuters.

Originally from New York but a long-term UK resident, Hunt gained cross-party political support in her campaign for justice.

Although voyeurism is a crime under the 2003 Sexual Offences Act, until 2020 the Crown Prosecution Service had stated filming someone naked in a private room did not constitute an offence if they had consented to being looked at while naked.

But after a court of appeal in January clarified nonconsensual intimate filming as illegal, prosecutors reviewed Hunt's case and arrested Killick in May.