Alabama Child Porn Sting Leads To Man Who Allegedly Put Hidden Cameras In Bathrooms, Recorded Boys Doing Their Business

Alabama police have arrested a child pornography suspect after determining that the man had placed hidden cameras in men’s bathrooms so he could record young boys doing their business, WLOX (Biloxi) is reporting.

Police say Kirston Jermaine Dowdell, 31, of Opelika, placed hidden cameras in the stalls of men’s bathroom at Opelika High School’s Bulldog stadium and inside the men’s restroom at Auburn’s Shug Jordan soccer field. Dowdell would then collect the footage from the camera and keep it on his computer and on a thumb drive. Investigators would later find videos of both adult men and underage boys using those toilets on his computer.

Police first became aware of the hidden cameras on October 13, when a patron at Opelika High School’s football stadium noticed a suspicious object, which he recognized as a hidden camera, in the men’s restroom. He notified a police officer, who also happened to be attending a football game at the stadium that day. Searching the bathroom, police found two cameras; one was behind a wall in a toilet stall, positioned in such a way as to capture video of someone using the toilet.

Specifically, the device was a Covert Coat Hook-style hidden camera with built-in DVR and an SD card slot in the back. As its name implies, the device is designed to look like a coat hanger, but contains a small camera that a trained eye can spot.

Police found another such hidden camera at the public restrooms at a nearby soccer stadium, and in a third, undisclosed location. It is not clear, as of this writing, how long the hidden cameras had been in operation when they were found.

Opelika Police Chief John McEachern told The Auburn Plainsman that he believes all of the hidden cameras have been found. Further, he said, he believes that none of the pornographic images have been disseminated beyond the suspect’s own computer.

“We are confident that no threat to the public exists at this time. The preliminary examination found no indication that the videos have been uploaded to the internet or shared with others.”

Once investigators honed in on Dowdell, they say that he allowed them to search his home and computers. There, they found fewer than two dozen images of underage boys using the toilets, as well as other images of child pornography that Dowdell had allegedly received from other users through peer-to-peer sharing networks.

“An initial investigation by the FBI has revealed fewer than two dozen child victims whom the FBI, the Auburn Police Department and the Opelika Police Department are working diligently to positively identify.”

It is not clear how many videos and images of adult men using the toilets that Dowdell is alleged to have kept.

After his arrest, police say that Dowdell wrote a confession in which he owned up to his alleged crimes. He admitted to putting the cameras in the bathrooms and to storing and viewing the footage. He denied sharing any of the images on the internet or to other users.

Dowdell faces charges of manufacturer and possession of child pornography as well as aggravated criminal surveillance. Meanwhile, the investigation has been handed over to the FBI’s Child Exploitation Task Force.

Dowdell is not the first person to have been accused of using hidden cameras to produce child pornography this week. As The Ann Arbor News reports, an unidentified Michigan man was arrested last week on suspicion that he had placed a hidden camera in his own bathroom so he could record his wife’s children using the toilet.

[Featured Image by Opelika Police Department]