An elementary school teacher whose sexual obsession with a colleague led him to secretly film the man, other teachers and parent volunteers using the restroom was sentenced Friday to three years in jail.
Washoe District Judge Brent Adams noted that Terry Rauh, who was sentenced without the chance for parole, evolved from a respected teacher to a disgraced video voyeur whose arrest last year caused him to lose his career, home, money and dignity.
Rauh, 44, pleaded guilty to five counts of the gross misdemeanor of capturing an image of the private area of another. His voyeurism was discovered in April 2010 by a staff member at Jesse Hall Elementary School in Sparks after his iPod nano recording device that he concealed behind the staff restroom fell to the ground. No children were filmed.
Rauh’s family and friends told Adams that they felt the death of his mother in 2009 and keeping his homosexuality a secret his whole life led him to make the illicit bathroom recordings. Some said the trauma caused him to use the recordings as an outlet to receive immediate gratification and forget his loss, while others felt his mother’s death gave him license to act on his sexual desires.
But court testimony revealed Rauh had been filming his male colleague since 2007, which escalated in April 2010 to Rauh breaking into the man’s home while the man was on vacation and then downloading the man’s family photos from his computer onto a portable flash drive. Rauh later downloaded the stolen pictures to his home computer, Deputy District Attorney Luke Prengaman said.
Files on Rauh’s computer showed in 2007 he had downloaded pictures of the same man’s genitals that had been taken by a camera Rauh secretly placed under a desk at the elementary school. Prengaman said investigators also discovered on Rauh’s home computer that he had been using a “pinhole” camera, clipped on his clothes, to capture the man on school grounds as well as the conversations he held with him. Rauh also installed spyware on the man’s computer.
Many victims testified that they felt betrayed by Rauh, who befriended them at the same time he was filming them in the bathroom. They said they were angry, ashamed, embarrassed and humiliated. One woman said that while society may have made Rauh to feel like an outcast, his victims never did and were his friends.
The male victim said that his life has been negatively impacted and affected his relationships with his family and friends. He said that the crimes were planned, well-thought-out and required that Rauh buy equipment.
View full post on National Cyber Security » Spyware/ Cyber Snooping