By Chris Spargo, Law and Crime

A Connecticut heiress who confessed in court to filming secret videos of children without their knowledge could serve as little as 90 days behind bars while also keeping the details of her offenses shielded from the public, according to court documents signed by a judge on Feb. 9.

Hadley Palmer, 53, turned herself in at the Greenwich Police Department last October after a judge signed out a warrant for her arrest. The charges against Palmer all stemmed from incidents in 2017 and 2018 when she allegedly “photographed, filmed and recorded specific individuals without their knowledge or consent, and under circumstances where those individuals were not in plain view and had a reasonable expectation of privacy, and at least one photograph taken by the defendant depicted a person who was a minor,” according to court papers.

Palmer made her first court appearance just a few days after her arrest, the court records indicate. She informed Judge John F. Blawie that she hoped to enroll in an accelerated rehabilitation program offered by the state during that initial meeting.

Upon hearing that Palmer planned to explore the program, which allows low-level offenders to avoid jail following their first offense, most of the record in the case became sealed. Judge Blawie stated in a court filing that the initial sealing of the file was not necessarily his decision; rather, Palmer’s decision to enter the pretrial accelerated rehabilitation program “resulted in the temporary sealing of the file pursuant to statute.” In other words, it was the statute, not the court per se, that both triggered and forced the initial seal.

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