A former high school and country club swim coach in Kentucky is charged with taking photos of an underage girl as she was changing in a restroom, and then uploading the photos to the internet.
53-year-old Mark Fowler was an assistant swim coach at Ryle High School in Union, Kentucky, along with the Triple Crown Country Club. According to Cincinnati news station WLWT, he had worked at the high school since July of 2015, but was fired when the school board was told of his arrest this week. Ryle was arrested Monday evening.
Fowler is accused of taking video and photos of a juvenile girl as she changed in a restroom. Sheriff Tom Scheben said Fowler “set up his camera in video mode and took video,” according to the WLWT report, and then took four ‘snaps’ of the video. Local news station WCPO reports that Fowler then uploaded the photos to a SmugMug account.
He was charged with four counts of promoting a sexual performance by a minor and four counts of possessing or viewing matter portraying a sexual performance by a minor.
The WCPO report says the girl was not a student at Ryle High School.
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It’s really troubling that there are people out there doing this, causing such emotional harm to their victims. It’s also troubling that these are swim coaches, and it’s still happening, even after so much publicity about sexual misconduct in our sport. It gives the sport and honest coaches and administrators a suspect reputation in our society at large.
On the other hand, it’s encouraging that these people are caught and prosecuted, instead of the pattern of hiding evidence and hushing everything down. The more that people see that the sport and administrators at all levels are doing something about these problems should show that these crimes are taken seriously. Hopefully this will serve to encourage parents and swimmers that the… Read more »
These stories seem to appear about once a week these days. Troubling.
How disgusting and terrifying for that girl, those photos are out for life