College Station man sentenced for invasive visual recording

COLLEGE STATION, Texas (KBTX) – A College Station man will be serving five years in the state jail after being sentenced on Thursday for five counts of invasive visual recordings.

Peter Baty, a former Texas A&M transportation employee, was arrested in May of 2019 after he was caught hiding a video camera inside a women’s restroom at Transportation Service’s Transit building located on Agronomy Road. According to the university, the restroom was not open to the public and was used by employees.

According to an arrest report in 2019, Baty was seen on surveillance cameras entering the women’s restroom around 5:00 a.m. beginning on April 12, 2019, and continuing on subsequent Fridays until May 3, 2019. The district attorney’s office said the camera ran 24 hours a day for five months before its discovery.

When the device was found it led to a search warrant of Baty’s home. At the time of the arrest, investigators recovered an estimated 800 videos of at least 20 women from a single SD card. On Thursday the Brazos County District Attorney’s Office told KBTX that over 15,000 video recordings were found, however, 90 percent of those recordings were mostly of a dark empty restroom.

So far 67 victims have been identified, but the camera recording over a hundred people according to the district attorney’s office.

Texas A&M issued a statement to KBTX following the sentencing it read:

“Texas A&M University sincerely apologizes for the distress and trauma imposed by this former employee on his victims. We hope today’s court action will provide a step toward healing for each of them. Our priority remains supporting our staff.

We also would like to thank the University Police Department for its swift and thorough investigation.

We urge staff, students and faculty needing support to use our counseling services and check out our other wellness resources.”

As punishment, Baty received one year for each count. The Brazos County District Attorney’s Office said they pushed for Baty to receive the maximum sentence of 24 months per count which would have been 10 years in a state jail.

The district attorney’s office said Baty pled guilty in April of this year.

”The police department did a really good job investigating the case. It was pretty clear from the jump that he was the one who did this and that’s what ultimately led him to pleading guilty and this being a punishment hearing in front of a judge instead of a trial in front of a jury,” Assistant District Attorney Rachel Porter.

According to the district attorney’s office, University Police also found evidence that Baty was responsible for an unsolved case in 2013 where a student returned to her apartment to find a box containing photos of her undressing in various stages along with an explicit note. However, the statute of limitations had run out preventing him from being charged for that incident.

“It took a lot of hard work by the University Police Department and it took a lot of patience and strength from some of the women who were affected. it’s been a long process its something that has continued to affect them and they got to be heard today and got to see some justice done,” Porter said.