BURLINGTON — Rice Memorial High School teacher Brian Lynam has pleaded not guilty to a misdemeanor charge of voyeurism in connection with an incident in which he allegedly was seen taking a photograph up the skirt of a student.
At a hearing Thursday in Vermont Superior Court, police said Lynam kept electronic devices and journals that provided evidence consistent with the charge the 31-year-old Burlington resident is facing.
In passages from his hand-written journal labeled “Notes for Therapy 11/19/2014,” Lynam wrote: “#1 Confession Sex addiction? Perverted? Think about sex almost constantly. — Fantasize about a lot of girls.” “Fetish for voyeur situations and exhibition, derived possibly form early childhood experience of catching view up teachers skirt. I keep track of all sightings that arouse me sexually, many documented by date and time.”
South Burlington Police Cpl. Kevin Grealis wrote in an affidavit that a search of Lynam’s Sherman Street home yielded an external hard drive, two thumb drives, SD cards and multiple diaries.
The Vermont State Computer Crimes Unit conducted forensic previews on devices seized, indicating multiple images of girls in spandex pants and images of female buttocks. Images also appeared to progress from those showing girls who were clothed to others that seemed to be “upskirting.”
The affidavit did not indicate where Lynam obtained the images. South Burlington Detective Sarah Superneau said Lynam gave police permission to look at his cellphone in the early stages of the inquiry. The device was brought back to police headquarters where a police detective analyzed the phone.
The detective’s analysis said an SD card that apparently had been removed from the phone contained many thumbnail images. “Several suspicious” thumbnails were located, with images that appear to be of a ceiling, a hand on a rail in a hallway, a leg and a skirt, along with a person’s hands and body with a brick hallway.
“These thumbnail photos were from angles and objects in the hallways where Mr. Lynam would have been taking photos with his hand down by his side,” according to the affidavit. “This is consistent with what someone would have to do in order to take an upskirt photo.”
Judge Michael Kupersmith allowed Lynam to remain free on conditions, including that he have no contact with the 17-year-old victim and that he stay away from the Rice campus in South Burlington.
Police launched an investigation last month after a student first reported the incident to a Rice administrator. The student said he had observed Lynam walking up a stairwell behind a female student with his phone in his hand and the camera application turned on. He said Lynam was looking at the screen while the device was aimed up the female student’s skirt.
As a result, police concluded Lynam had “used his cellular phone to attempt to photograph or record the intimate areas of the student as she was walking up the stairs, without her consent.”
Rice High School Interim Principal Lisa Lorenz showed police surveillance video where Lynam, the alleged victim and the student who allegedly witnessed the incident “reached the top of the stairs and entered the main hall on the second floor.”
In the footage, “the female student turned left on the second floor and Mr. Lynam turned right into the library with his phone still in his hand,” Grealis wrote.
Lorenz also contacted the state Department of Children and Families about the incident, according to Grealis.
Lynam, the school’s music and theater director, was placed on administrative leave following the March 20 incident. Rice High School Director of Advancement and Communications Christy Bahrenburg said in an email Friday that his status was unchanged.
Before joining the Rice faculty, Lynam worked at Mater Christi School. That school’s president, Tim Loescher, said it had received no complaints about Lynam’s behavior while he was employed there from 2011 to 2013.
Lynam’s attorney, Paul Volk, was in court Friday morning and unavailable for comment.
Read the story on VTDigger here: Rice high faculty member denies voyeurism charge.