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Scratch this off of the list of viable defenses.
An Omaha man claimed that he placed a video camera under the crack of a bathroom door and filmed his wife's 13-year-old daughter as she was coming out of the shower because he thought the girl was in distress.
A jury didn't buy it.
A Douglas County jury of three men and nine women convicted John L. Gibbs Wednesday of manufacturing child pornography for shooting the video of the girl from the neck down as she got out of the shower. He faces up to five years of probation or 20 years in prison when he is sentenced in February.
Gibbs, 41, had left no doubt as to who the cameraman was that day. After filming the girl, Gibbs went to shut off the video camera and inadvertently captured his face on tape.
In turn, he told a Douglas County sheriff's investigator that he grabbed the video camera only because he heard a blood-curdling scream from the bathroom and wanted to make sure the girl was OK, prosecutor Molly Smith said.
Slight problem: The girl said she didn't scream that day.
After discovering the videotape in June, it was the girl's mother who wanted to scream.
Married to Gibbs in January 2006, the woman didn't notice anything suspicious about Gibbs until last year. In December, Smith said, the woman discovered a videotape her husband had taken of a woman sunbathing. Although nothing explicit was shown, Smith said, Gibbs' wife found it strange and confronted him.
He promised not to do it again.
Then on Father's Day, the woman discovered the video of her daughter.
The video, shot under the door, showed towels on the floor and a few seconds of the girl emerging, naked, from the shower, Smith said. That footage was found on the videotape right after a slide show that Gibbs had produced for his grandmother's funeral.
Gibbs' wife immediately called police and, within two weeks, filed for divorce.
During his interview with sheriff's deputies, Gibbs said he pointed the video camera under the door out of concern for the girl's safety. He went from describing the girl's purported outburst as a “blood-curdling scream” to describing it as a “disconcerting noise,” as if the girl had seen a spider.
Douglas County sheriff's investigators searched Gibbs' home and found other videos, including video shot through the windows of homes of women changing their clothes, young women in swimsuits at an outdoor pool and one apparently taken from a camera inside Gibbs' car of young women at a charity carwash. In some of the videos, the camera zoomed in on the women's body parts, according to court documents.
However, Smith said, those videos didn't show anything explicit — and prosecutors could not determine who the women were or prove that Gibbs shot the videos.
Gibbs previously had done video work for Mission Nebraska, a nonprofit organization founded by assistant Nebraska football coach Ron Brown, Gibbs' estranged wife said. Investigators searched Gibbs' work equipment and found nothing suspicious, she said.
Now 14, the girl has been in therapy. She had to testify in Gibbs' two-day trial this week in Douglas County District Court.
“She's doing well,” the girl's mother said. “I'm just glad nothing else happened to her.”
Smith, the prosecutor, said the case highlights the fact that people, especially children, are more likely to be victimized by acquaintances than strangers.
“No one did anything wrong here except the defendant,” Smith said. “There was nothing (the mother) could have done to stop this.”
Contact the writer:
444-1275, todd.cooper@owh.com
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