Prosecutors: Man Surreptitiously Photographed Daughter's Friends Naked

HAMMOND, Ind. (CBS) -- A Hammond, Ind., man is being held without bond, on charges that he provided alcohol to his 17-year-old daughter's friends and let them swim in his pool, then surreptitiously photographed them naked.

According to a criminal complaint filed last week in the U.S. District Court in Hammond, police first started investigating the suspect, Steven E. Lewis, when three friends of his daughter contacted them.

The unidentified girls told Hammond police that they had all visited Lewis' home, in the 7500 block of Jefferson Avenue in Hammond, on July 20, during which they swam in a pool and drank alcohol that Lewis provided.

The three girls all eventually fell asleep in the basement, and one of the girls said she was intoxicated, the complaint said.

Another girl said she woke up around 6:45 a.m. to discover Lewis walking around the basement. He left, only to return with a camera.

The teenager said he started taking pictures of one of the other girls who was sleeping on the couch before taking pictures of the third girl, whose breasts were exposed.

According to the complaint, the girl who was awake pretended she was asleep until she heard Lewis leave, then woke the other girls up.

They went to the house of one of their grandparents and told them what happened.

One of the girls had a key to Lewis' house and went back to retrieve the camera, which they showed to police. Among the images the girls found on the camera pictures of Lewis holding a pair of one of the girls' underwear next to his own genitals, according to the complaint.

Police obtained a search warrant for Lewis' computers, on which they found pictures of one of the girls from the morning of July 21. The computer also had two pictures of one of the girls from October, in which she can be seen naked in a bathroom.

A seven-minute video taken earlier in July shows another girl using the restroom.

According to the complaint, items in the background of the bathroom images match those in Lewis' house.

The girls told police Lewis had installed cameras all over the house to keep an eye on his elderly parents but they didn't know there was a camera in the bathroom, the complaint says.

Lewis did not fight a probable cause hearing Wednesday, according to federal court records, but did ask to be released to home confinement. U.S. Magistrate Judge Andrew Rodovich denied the motion.

U.S. attorneys asked for more time to file an indictment.

The Northwest Indiana Post-Tribune contributed to this report, via the Sun-Times Media Wire.