Former Gillespie County teacher gets 15 years for recording girls in bathroom, school dressing rooms

GILLESPIE COUNTY, Texas - A former Harper ISD teacher was sentenced to over a decade in prison for multiple felony offenses relating to recording young girls in bathrooms and dressing rooms.

By the numbers:

Pedro DeLuna III was sentenced on Sept. 3 to 15 years for:

• 3 counts of possession of lewd visual material depicting a child
• 12 counts of invasive visual recording of a bath/dressing room
• 1 count of tampering with or fabricating physical evidence with intent to impair
• Possession of child pornography — more than 50 visual depictions

The investigation uncovered a total of 10 victims and more than 50 photographs and videos depicting child sexual abuse material (CSAM), says the Gillespie County Sheriff's Office.

The backstory:

DeLuna was arrested on Dec. 1 for invasive video recording. 

His initial arrest came after Gillespie County Sheriff's investigators received a report on Nov. 8 about a 15-year-old girl who said she was recorded in the restroom without her knowledge or consent at DeLuna's Harper-area home.

Further investigation into the initial complaint uncovered several recordings of young girls found on a digital cloud storage, which had been obtained with a warrant.

Investigators say that DeLuna recorded nine more victims in a dressing room at Harper High School.

He was re-arrested on six charges on Dec. 5.

The tampering charge came from DeLuna attempting to delete and conceal evidence during the investigation in an effort to avoid prosecution. Investigators were able to recover the deleted data and identify additional evidence.

Dig deeper:

DeLuna was a second-year teacher at Harper ISD and was hired as the assistant band director/theater teacher/elementary music teacher, said the district last year.

Harper ISD had placed DeLuna on administrative leave upon learning of the allegations. The district says he voluntarily resigned on Nov. 10.