A TEENAGE girl kept her cool when she suspected her mother’s lover was using a hidden camera to spy on her having a bath, a court heard.

And when the 15-year-old looked, she found an iPhone hidden in a toiletries bag in a bathroom cabinet.

Calmly, the youngster deleted the recording from twisted Kenneth Mitchell’s phone to lull him into thinking it had not worked properly - and transferred the video he had made onto her own phone to keep as evidence.

Last Wednesday (5 November), he admitted using his phone to video the girl when she was naked.

Alison Montgomery, prosecuting, explained that Mitchell had been in a relationship with a woman and living in Stirlingshire.

She said Mitchell “took parental responsibility” and made it a “rule of the house” that anyone going for a bath should check if anyone else needed to use the loo first.

The girl did so, and then went to run her bath.

While it was filling, she heard what she thought was the sound of a iPhone recording.

She checked with a sibling to see if they were recording on their iPhone, but they weren’t.

Later, in the bathroom, the teenage girl noticed “what she thought was an iPhone in a bathroom cabinet protruding from a red toiletry bag”.

She played back the recording, used her mobile phone to capture the damning images, then erased them from Mitchell’s phone.

The depute fiscal said the girl did not say anything at first “because she didn’t want to upset her mum”.

But she later showed her mother the recording that the accused had made, and the police were called in.

Ms Montgomery said that Mitchell told the family: “I know what I did was wrong. I can’t even explain it. I don’t know what went through my head to do such a thing.” But he refused to make a comment when charged by police.

At Falkirk Sheriff Court, Mitchell (51), of Orchard Court, Thornliebank, Glasgow, pleaded guilty to concealing a mobile phone with a video capacity in a bathroom, and recording the girl undressing until she was naked and her breasts and buttocks were exposed as she took a bath.

The charge said he did it with the intention of him or another person looking at an image of the girl - who cannot be named - doing a private act.

The incident occurred on 16 January 2014.

Sheriff John Mundy deferred sentence until 27 November for background reports and placed Mitchell on the sex offenders’ register.