A SHOP director has been found guilty of voyeurism after covertly filming an underage model getting changed above his shop.

Adrian Drabble, 62, recorded the 15-year-old girl for the purpose of obtaining sexual gratification.

Hereford Magistrates heard Drabble, a director with Crystal Carpets, also ran a small modelling agency to promote his furniture store.

Sarah Hurd, prosecuting, told the court that in December, 2017, Drabble took the girl shopping for clothes before taking her to his business premises in Ledbury for a photo shoot.

The teenager was told to bring both a black bra and a white bra and that she would need to change her underwear to co-ordinate with the clothes she was wearing for the pictures.

But the victim became suspicious after noticing a picture of the inside of the changing room on Drabble’s computer while he showed her photographs from a previous shoot.

On entering the changing room, an upstairs office in the building, she found a mobile phone hidden in a box with the camera turned on.

The girl left the changing room and contacted her mother, who advised her to leave the premises.

A police investigation found footage from a previous shoot stored on Drabble’s computer, which showed the girl removing her bra in the changing room.

Drabble, of Pencraig, Ross-on-Wye, told the court that security cameras had been installed in the building after a break in a few years earlier, but that no permanent camera had been installed in the changing area.

He admitted that the models were not told that there was a camera in the room, but said that signs elsewhere in the building warned visitors that a CCTV system was in operation.

Drabble said he had put the camera in the room so that if any allegations of inappropriate behaviour were made against him, he could show the film to prove that they were untrue.

"If somebody is getting changed, then I would put it there. After they have changed, then it would be removed from the room, because if there's no-one in the room, then there is nobody to protect and so it serves no purpose," he said.

He denied placing the camera to gain sexual gratification from the films, which he said he had not watched.

Delivering the guilty verdict, Chairman Jane Hinton said: "Adrian Drabble says he filmed the girl in order to protect himself from possible allegations. He said he did not record the images for sexual gratification.

"We are sure he took these images for the purpose of sexual gratification. Any sensible person would realise it was not a good idea to film a young woman changing.

"To suggest it was for protection is not credible. The only possible reason for him to have done this was for his own sexual gratification, otherwise he would have asked for a chaperone to accompany the girl."

Drabble will be sentenced early next month.