LEEDS, UK (3 Apr 2006) -- A scuba diving school boss set up a video camera to secretly film a 13-year-old girl and two women getting undressed, a court was told. David Hepworth, owner and manager of Leeds-based scuba diving club Bear Divers, was caught when a BBC Look North cameraman rented the camera and discovered footage of a woman undressing, a jury at Leeds Crown Court heard. Hepworth, 36, has denied three counts of voyeurism by recording another person doing a private act in order to obtain sexual gratification. Rupert Doswell, prosecuting, told the court that Hepworth came to the attention of police when BBC cameraman Joseph Bilton handed in a tape he found in the back of a waterproof dive camera rented from the Bear Divers' base in Stanningley Road, Armley. The footage showed Hepworth's face as he set up the camera and soon after a woman trying on a wetsuit. Police officers who attended the dive shop discovered a camera on a shelf in a classroom that doubled up as a changing room. A film inside showed a girl, 13, and two women, aged 26 and 39, undressing on two dates last July. For legal reasons none of the victims can be named. Mr Doswell told the court that Hepworth told the teenage girl that she should take off her top when changing into a dive suit to ensure it fitted properly. The girl ignored this advice. Later that day a 26-year-old woman was filmed. Hepworth told the woman to take off all her clothes and put on her swimming costume – which she did – in order to save time when they arrived at a swimming pool in Wakefield, said Mr Doswell. In between the footage of the girl and the woman, Hepworth was caught on film entering the empty room and fiddling with the camera. | | UK scuba school owner David Hepworth on trial The third woman was filmed in her underwear shortly after Hepworth introduced his bride-to-be to her. When interviewed by police Hepworth, of Lees Hall Road, Thornhill Lees, Dewsbury, at first denied any knowledge of the film but later accepted it was him on the footage, saying it must have happened by accident. He replied 'no comment' to some questions. A month later, he claimed he had set it up to catch shoplifters. "The explanation about security reasons simply makes no sense. There is nothing of any value that the camera focuses on during the footage," said Mr Doswell. PC Tara Turner, who arrested Hepworth on July 16 last year, said he seemed quite nervous and "seemed to go paler" when a colleague recovered the film. His hands were shaking. The trial continues. SOURCE - Yorkshire Post |
