A former Chester County student teacher filmed male students undressing and showering, police say

A student teacher at a Chester County high school secretly filmed male students while they undressed and showered in a locker room, police said Wednesday.

Samuel Fischer was charged with child pornography, unlawful contact with a minor, invasion of privacy, and related crimes after investigators discovered photos of male students he took while working at Owen J. Roberts High School in South Coventry Township, authorities said.

That, in turn, led them to discover other photos of underage students he took years earlier while working at the Pine-Richland School District in the northern suburbs of Pittsburgh, according to court filings.

Fischer, 34, who now lives in Erie, told Pennsylvania State Police detectives he enjoys pornography in the style of “hidden locker room camera-type stuff,” according to the affidavit of probable cause for his arrest.

He was released on $100,000 unsecured bail, court records show. Attempts to reach Fischer were unsuccessful Wednesday. His attorney, Steven M. Pacillio, said Fischer denies having inappropriate contact with anyone and has fully cooperated with investigators.

State police investigators were contacted by Owen J. Roberts officials in January 2023, after students on the high school’s wrestling team told staff that Fischer had recorded them while they were showering in the school’s locker room, the affidavit said.

The students told detectives Fischer had placed his cell phone in the back pocket of his pants, positioning it so the camera was facing the shower area. One of the students noticed that the phone was recording and confronted him, according to the affidavit.

A spokesperson for the Owen J. Roberts School District said that Fischer was not an employee of the district but worked for a company it had hired, and that he had been at the school for less than a week when his alleged actions were reported to district officials. He was immediately removed and barred from school property, the spokesperson said, and parents of the students involved were notified of the investigation.

In an interview with police, Fischer initially denied recording the students, but later admitted he did so and said he had deleted the video immediately afterward, according to the affidavit. Fischer, the document said, told detectives he had filmed similar videos twice before. He said he had also deleted those videos from his phone and denied sharing them with anyone.

Detectives served search warrants on Fischer’s cell phone and laptop, and discovered pictures of partially nude students changing in locker rooms at Pine-Richland High School in June 2018. The pictures appeared to have been taken without the students’ knowledge, according to the warrant.

In a letter sent to parents Wednesday, a spokesperson for the Pine-Richland School District said the district had been unaware of Fischer’s alleged crimes before being contacted by state police. Fischer worked at the district as an athletic trainer between 2014 and 2019 through a third-party contractor that had performed the background checks and clearances, according to the statement.

The parents of the students seen in the pictures found on Fischer’s electronic devices had been contacted by Pine-Richland, and school officials said they were cooperating with the investigation.

Investigators found additional photos and videos of students in various states of undress on other electronic devices recovered from a storage unit that Fischer had rented in Lancaster County. Those devices contained child pornography, the affidavit said.

Fischer will appear in court for a preliminary hearing on Jan. 23, court records show.