Ikard found guilty of voyeurism, possession of child pornography

A Las Cruces jury found local businessman Paul Ikard guilty on two counts of voyeurism and one count of possession of child pornography.

“The children in this particular case were so easy to victimize,” said James Dickens, the Chief Deputy District Attorney for New Mexico’s 12th Judicial District. “They really felt like they didn’t have a voice.”

The judge dismissed five misdemeanor counts on Wednesday. At sentencing, Ikard could face 18 months in prison per count, which would be up four and a half years total. He did not testify Wednesday.

Prosecutors said the videos the jury saw were obscene and reprehensible.

“In each one of these videos, you saw Mr. Ikard setting up the camera,” Dickens said. “You saw Mr. Ikard adjusting it to the right view he wanted. Unfortunately, you saw the victims being paraded in front of that camera.”

Paul Ikard was arrested in May 2016 in connection with secretly recording children in his bathroom.

In March 2017, one of Ikard’s accusers told ABC-7 that she was hurt, saying “I kind of feel scared to the point where I just start crying.”

According to the Las Cruces Police Department, Ikard allegedly asked an Ohio company if they could recover lost data from a hard drive in September 2015. Upon trying to restore the device, police say the Ohio company found child pornography.

After that company contacted the FBI, federal investigators determined they could not prove federal charges, but referred the case to the Las Cruces Police Department for state charges, police said.

After obtaining a search warrant for the device, investigators found “videos of children,” the department said. Police say they later searched Ikard’s home and found a video camera with Velcro. According to the department, investigators found “a matching piece of Velcro” concealed in Ikard’s bathroom.

Ikard should be sentenced within 30 days, according to prosecutors. Expect ABC-7’s complete coverage on-air and online.