Upskirt shame of school lab worker
Technician jailed over photos of colleague from hidden cameras
A LABORATORY technician infatuated with a woman who worked at the same school as him installed secret cameras under her desk, in a bin and a store cupboard to take ‘upskirt’ photos of her.
Michael Nicholls, 47, even sneaked into the victim’s bedroom during a party at her home to plant a motion-activated device to see her naked.
He also installed a video camera in his own bathroom when he knew the woman, who considered him a friend, was due to visit and filmed her going to the toilet.
And he downloaded a secret recording app on his mobile phone that he used to try and film video up her skirt in his garden.
Mold Crown Court heard that while the victim, who cannot be named for legal reasons, thought married Nicholls was ‘over-friendly’,
‘Disgraceful conduct’
she had no idea of his five-year obsession. It started in 2015 when she asked him to back up some holiday snaps, including photos of her in a bikini, on her personal computer.
Nicholls’s secret was only discovered by chance in July last year after he accidentally dropped a memory card containing images of his victim at the school where he, his wife and their female colleague all worked.
When the assistant headteacher looked at its contents to find the owner, she immediately recognised the female member of staff. The woman was informed and, to her horror, spotted Nicholls’s bathroom in the pictures.
Police were alerted and during a raid on his home in Denbighshire, North Wales, they found more than 2,360 videos and images of the woman on two memory cards, a mobile phone and a computer hard drive.
Nicholls admitted to officers that he was attracted to the victim and ‘wanted to see her naked for his own sexual gratification’.
Yesterday the father-of-one was jailed for three years and five months after admitting voyeurism, operating camera equipment under clothing – or ‘upskirting’ – and outraging public decency.
Judge David Hale told him: ‘Your victim has been grievously affected… [by] your disgraceful conduct. Unbeknown to her she became the target of your fixation and your lust.
‘You installed that equipment in the school – under a desk, in a bin that she would have to step over and in a cupboard – all the time hoping to be able to register photographs you would find titillating.’
The court heard that over five years Nicholls gathered hundreds of pictures and videos of his victim’s legs, underwear and chest that he doctored and duplicated repeatedly.
In a victim impact statement, the woman said she considered Nicholls and his wife, who she had known for 13 years, as friends and his actions left her feeling betrayed and ‘ill’.
‘I am so angry – it’s just horrible,’ she added.
Nicholls’s wife, with whom he has a teenage daughter, wept as he was jailed. She is believed to be standing by him.