The volleyball coach has been charged with child porn and unauthorized video recording of a minor.
A 16-year-old named Jessica says she caught the girls’ volleyball coach secretly videotaping her in a locker room.
“I went into the locker room and I was changing by my locker and I looked up and saw a camera,” Jessica, who asked that her last name not be used, told Inside Edition. “I was terrified.”
It was a shocking invasion of privacy; just imagine changing in a locker room and spotting a camera pointed right at you.
Jessica was understandably outraged, so were her parents, Linda and Richard. In a video they shot, the former high school dean can be seen explaining what happened at Richards High School in Oak Lawn, Ill.
“While she was changing she looked up and saw right here, this was pushed down more and she saw the top of a phone,” the dean said.
The volleyball coach, Raymond Van Syckle, allegedly pulled down a curtain rod to record Jessica from a viewing room in an office that looks out at the locker room.
“I was in shock,” Jessica said when she first saw the camera. “I started running as fast as I could.”
Van Syckle was arrested and charged with possession of child porn and unauthorized video recording of a minor. He’s pleaded not guilty to the charges.
He was tight-lipped when Inside Edition Chief Investigative Correspondent Lisa Guerrero tried to speak to him on his way out of court.
“Sir, do you normally videotape girls in the locker room?” she asked. “Are you just a locker room pervert?”
Van Syckle didn’t answer and got into a waiting car.
Jessica and her family are now suing both the school and Van Syckle, alleging that he had been previously reported for inappropriate conduct of sexual nature with female students. But instead of being fired, they allege he was moved to a different position that gave him 'unsupervised access' to female students. The school and Van Syckle both deny any wrongdoing.
“I hope he pays for what he did to my daughter,” Jessica’s outraged mother added.
