A teacher at a girls’ school has pleaded guilty to using a mobile phone to look up teenagers’ skirts and film them from behind.
Paul Andrew Daw, 48, appeared at Wirral magistrates court (Liverpool, England) accused of five charges of outraging public decency, and one of making an indecent image of a child.
Daw, an English teacher for more than 20 years, had been working at University Academy Birkenhead, the court was told.
One of the charges he faced was recording ‘female pupils from behind, their backsides and chest area’ on December 18, 2012.
Four other charges related to filming up the skirt of girls and young women in Liverpool city centre on March 23, and December 9, 18 and 21.
Prosecutor Amanda Cullen told the court Daw had been caught after a woman complained to a community support officer at a mobile police station on Church Street in Liverpool.
The woman said she had seen a man ‘following her daughter around the shops and filming her’.
The prosecutor said the officer quickly found Daw, of Bebington, Wirral, and took him back to the mobile station and when asked if he had recorded any indecent images Daw had replied ‘they could be construed as offensive’ and ‘they might be indecent to some’.
When his phone was examined 41 video clips of teenage girls were discovered and Miss Cullen said Daw had been videoing at shops in Liverpool, Birkenhead and Ellesmere Port.
Daw had said it was a ‘blessing in disguise’ that he was caught, that it was not sexual but had become an ‘obsessive compulsive’ but admitted his actions were ‘indecent and offensive’.
Chair of the magistrates bench Mrs Yvonne Woodhead said the case would be passed to Liverpool crown court for sentencing on December 11, and Daw was released on unconditional bail.
