A disgraced Nowra policeman has confessed to secretly filming the young daughter of a fellow cop while she was in the shower.
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Wayne West, 48, was living in a granny flat at the rear of his colleague's property last year when he used a GoPro camera and his own mobile phone to covertly record the 12-year-old girl as she showered in the bathroom of the main house.
He attempted to play down the incident when caught, telling investigating officers his criminal behaviour had been the result of a "brain fart" moment.
He denied having a sexual interest in pre-pubescent girls when initially interviewed, however police later discovered 11 child abuse images stored on his mobile phone.
West was charged with two counts of filming a person in a private act without consent and one count of possessing child abuse material.
He pleaded guilty to the charges in Wollongong Local Court last week.
A set of agreed facts tendered to the court reveal the victim's mother allowed West to rent the granny flat at the rear of her property after he split from his wife last year.
She told investigators West and her daughters got on well and she trusted him with them because he had daughters of his own and was a police officer.
The woman began renovating the bathroom in the granny flat shortly after West moved in. As a result, West started using the bathroom in the main house, which was also used by the woman's children.
One day late last year, the woman told West her daughter was staying home from school for the day.
The court heard West went into the bathroom and set up the GoPro camera inside his toiletries bag, pointing it towards the shower. He then announced to the victim he was going for a walk.
Meanwhile, the girl went into the bathroom and began taking a shower.
West returned a short time later and approached the bathroom door, which was slightly ajar.
He took out his phone and began recording the girl through the gap as she showered.
The girl later told police she looked towards the door and noticed someone was recording.
She stopped showering, got dressed and went to her bedroom where she tearfully called her mother. "I think someone was video recording me when I was in the shower, through a gap in the bathroom door ... Mum, I'm scared."
The woman rushed home from work then took her daughter to Nowra Police Station to report the incident.
The pair gave a statement to specialist child abuse squad detectives in Wollongong the following day.
West was subsequently arrested and interviewed.
He told police he'd had a "brain fart moment" when putting the camera in the bathroom but denied he intended to record the victim or even knew she was going to have a shower.
He said once she had left the bathroom he retrieved the camera and went back to the granny flat where he viewed both the camera footage and the mobile phone footage, before deleting both.
He also admitted to having set up the camera in the bathroom once before, about three weeks earlier.
Police confiscated all of West's electronic devices. A forensic review unearthed the child abuse material, along with more still pictures of the victim sitting on the lounge one day. Several of the images focussed her her thighs or genital areas, police said.
West remains on bail and will face court in May for sentencing.
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