A stepfather who covertly filmed teen in bedroom and bathroom has been jailed

A man who hid cameras and covertly filmed his stepdaughter in her bedroom and bathroom for years has been sentenced in an Adelaide court.

A former national sporting coach who covertly filmed his stepdaughter in her bedroom and while showering over a number of years has been jailed for his “terrible” offending.

The man used a secret camera in a portable charger and placed secret cameras above a shower and in an airconditioning vent in the girl’s bedroom.

His “gross breach of trust” was uncovered when his teenage stepdaughter noticed he had left the powerbank in the shared bathroom of the family’s eastern suburbs home.

He appeared in the District Court on Tuesday, where Judge Liesl Chapman sentenced him to jail but partially suspended his sentence.

Judge Chapman said the girl searched the contents of the powerbank about a year later.

“She connected it to a computer and located videos of herself in the bathroom,” Judge Chapman said.

When police searched the home, they found electrical tape and cable ties rigged up inside the exhaust fan above the shower.

They seized a laptop, which contained two images and three videos of his stepdaughter, as well as other storage devices including 4 usb drives where more than 130 videos and 150,000 images of the victim had been stored – but deleted.

Judge Chapman said the man, aged in his 50s, had been abused as a child by a now deceased convicted paedophile, which he did not reveal until undergoing psychological treatment after his arrest.

“You wanted to understand how you could have perpetrated these crimes, particularly considering the burden you have borne of your own sexual abuse as a child,” she said.

“Of course, the abuse which you suffered as a child does not excuse what you did.”

She said his stepdaughter would now have to deal with the long-lasting impact of his offending.

“It is a terrible thing when a child is not safe in the family home,” she said.

“What you were doing became and addiction for you and you went to significant lengths to covertly record what she was doing in her bedroom and the bathroom.”

The stepfather, former state and national sporting coach, had started filming the girl because she was “exhibiting behaviours such as sneaking out of the house at night”.

He captured the teen “in a state of undress” and his offending “spiralled”.

Judge Chapman said the stepfather could only be sentenced for the videos and images which police were able to recover.

After discounts for his early pleas to a count each of producing child a, she imposed a seven-month sentence, two months of which was to be served in jail. The remaining five months were suspended on condition of a two-year good behaviour bond.