A federal judge’s son who obsessively filmed sexual encounters with women he dated without their consent — in what prosecutors called Manhattan’s “worst case of unlawful surveillance” in recent memory — got 30 days on Rikers Island and a ban on watching pornography at his sentencing Thursday.
The slap on the wrist was handed down to Daniel McAvoy, 52, along with five years’ probation by state Supreme Court Justice Ellen Biben over strenuous objections from the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.
“He had been doing this for more than 15 years, more than half his adult life,” Assistant District Attorney Danielle Turcotte said in court, urging Biben in vain to impose at least six months of jail time to deter others from committing the same type of conduct. The prosecutor noted women who McAvoy exploited were strongly against letting him walk.
In what Turcotte said was “some of the worst, if not the worst case of unlawful surveillance in this county in many years,” McAvoy built meticulously detailed profiles of the women he surreptitiously filmed, documenting their health history and even including images of their children.
He made the illegal recordings searchable on at least 150 homemade DVDs with “menu” shortcuts to different “chapters,” court documents detail. At least one woman targeted was a client of McAvoy in his work as a personal trainer, Turcotte said.
When he was arrested in 2022, prosecutors were barred by the statute of limitations from charging McAvoy for illegally filming the majority of the women who featured in the uncovered recordings, charging him with 29 counts of unlawful surveillance relating to just four women.
The unmarried father of one was facing up to three years in prison before his case was moved to a specialized court where defendants are given the opportunity to resolve their felony cases with alternative outcomes to prison. In November 2024, he was permitted to cop to seven counts of unlawful surveillance, tied to recordings made between March 2017 and October 2021 involving four women, and ordered to attend biweekly therapy.
Bragg’s office had fought the diversion, arguing that as a reasonably well-off, self-employed man of middle age with a master’s degree, McAvoy didn’t deserve the grace typically reserved for people whose criminal conduct was influenced by mental illness, an adolescent brain, a lack of education, drug addiction or other life challenges outside of their control. Prosecutors said McAvoy had acted purely for his own selfish interests by violating the trust of his sexual partners over and over again for years.
Arguing against any jail time, McAvoy’s lawyer Isabelle Kirshner on Thursday said that after his two years of therapy, there’d been a “measurable and tangible change in the man.”
Kirshner, who previously represented ex-state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and disgraced Columbia University gynecologist Robert Hadden in their sexual abuse cases, said McAvoy should get some slack for not disseminating the videos. She said it should be further credited that “every single encounter” of sex had been consented to by the women — although they didn’t know it would be filmed.
McAvoy, who cried during his courtroom remarks, apologized to the victims and said he had brought shame to his family and the legacy of his father, senior Northern District of New York Judge Thomas McAvoy. The Reagan-appointed jurist’s Binghamton home was raided in the investigation over the illegal recordings in 2022. The father was not accused of any wrongdoing in the case.
In his remarks, McAvoy said he was drowning in debt, had no college savings for his young daughter, and was down to zero clients in his work as a personal trainer.
“I’ve always revered and respected women, but I did not live up to that,” McAvoy said, pleading with Biben not to send him to jail for the sake of his kid. “I beg the court not to let my past wrongs cause more suffering to my daughter.”
McAvoy also faces two civil lawsuits over the conduct. In one of them, a woman referred to as Jane Doe 2 detailed that during the years she dated McAvoy, he always insisted they meet at his apartment and only for two hours at a time. The woman said she initially thought she was being pranked when contacted by Manhattan prosecutors.
“But when Jane Doe 2 traveled to the Manhattan D.A.’s office, she was horrified to be proven wrong,” the suit reads. “The DA showed Jane Doe countless images and videos depicting herself in the nude or having sex with Defendant — all secretly taken and recorded by Defendant. Jane Doe 2 was humiliated and horrified at the sight of them.”
However short, the jail stint imposed by Biben was somewhat of a surprise, as McAvoy was expected to receive no time at all in the alternatives-to-incarceration court. In a decision last month, the judge found the chances of McAvoy reoffending were slim and that having to register as a sex offender would hinder his parenting abilities.
After hearing from a blubbering McAvoy, the judge credited the man’s strides in therapy and the support he provided his daughter and elderly parents, but said she was troubled by his own descriptions of his “serious and troubling” crimes as simply having been “careless.”
“It indicates to the court that he does not fully accept the gravity of his actions,” Biben said, saying McAvoy had been anything but careless. “It took premeditation, and it was a gross violation.”
Biben, who banned McAvoy from contacting his victims, ordered him to comply with probationary terms typically required of registered sex offenders, even though he won’t legally be one, such as attending sex offender treatment and refraining from fraternizing with sex offenders or watching pornography. She ordered him to report to jail on May 11.
McAvoy’s lawyer Wayne Gosnell didn’t object to the jail sentence but did try to fight the ban, arguing the case didn’t have anything to do with porn.
“I don’t know that you can sit here and say this has nothing to do with pornography,” Biben countered. “I don’t think you want to go down this road.”