KATY, Texas – A former Katy Independent School District choir director told a girl to take off all her clothes before she tried on gowns in a changing room that he was secretly recording, prosecutors said.
The revelation came after a Monday morning hearing for 28-year-old Clarence Appleby, who has been charged with invasive improper photography and operating a video camera inside a changing room.
According to Chief Prosecutor Angela Weltin, Appleby converted a closet in his Mayde High School classroom into a changing room and told a 17-year-old student Friday to go inside and change into several different sizes of robes. He told the student to be sure to remove her bra and underwear so that lines wouldn’t show on the robes.
The student was changing into her third gown, prosecutors said, when she noticed a box in the changing room. She looked inside the box and found a video recorder. After calling her mother to figure out what to do, the girl took the recorder, hid it and walked out of the room.
"Her choir teacher approached her and asked her if she had taken something of his,” Weltin said. “When she said, ‘Yes. Because it was on,’ he instructed her to take it out. They played it on the computer. She saw herself on that computer having undressed and it being recorded and then he instructed her to delete that."
Appleby, who did not have an attorney present, did not answer questions from reporters as he left the courthouse.
Appleby’s next court date is scheduled for Nov. 8.
If convicted, Appleby faces up to two years in jail.