Ex-Missouri high school teacher admits secretly recording pornographic videos of teens
A former high school teacher in northwest Missouri pleaded guilty Monday to producing child pornography, admitting he secretly recorded pornographic videos of three teenagers at his residence.
William Derek Williams, who was a teacher at Cameron High School, pleaded guilty in federal court in Kansas City. He admitted he filmed the victims from January 2013 to September 2018 in his basement bathroom, according to prosecutors.
Williams, 39, of Cameron, was initially charged with three counts of producing child pornography and one count of possessing child pornography. Williams had taught language arts in high school and, more recently, was teaching multimedia classes part-time at the time of the alleged offenses.
A 15-year-old victim found a hidden camera, designed to look like a cell phone charger, in September 2018, prosecutors said. He opened the device and recovered a micro SD card, which he put in his phone to see its contents.
The card included a secretly-recorded video of him. The teenager gave the device to investigators.
Two days after the teenager found the camera, detectives with the Clinton County Sheriff’s Office executed a search warrant at Williams’ home, seizing a laptop and an SD card. Both devices contained pornographic videos of two other teens ages 14 to 16, according to federal prosecutors.
Williams faces 15 to 30 years in federal prison without parole when he is sentenced.
The case was prosecuted as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in 2006 by the U.S. Department of Justice to combat child sexual exploitation and abuse.
Months before Williams was indicted in federal court, the Clinton County prosecutor’s office filed other charges against him in state court, including second-degree statutory sodomy for a crime alleged to have occurred in 2015.
Williams has pleaded not guilty in that case.
