The discovery of a bathroom spy camera led to the arrest of a Gainesville talent manager for sexual coercion, massages and filming of minors, police said.
On Aug. 5, a person was in a bathroom with his girlfriend when he noticed a clock that looked like a hidden camera, according to a Gainesville police report. When he opened the back of the clock, he found an SD card.
Shortly after discovering the spy camera, the person who uncovered the camera got an unprompted call from Howard Louis Anderson Jr., 38, trying to explain why he placed the camera there, police said.
The man told police that Anderson said he placed the clock in the bathroom to set alarms and avoid being late.
When police looked at the contents of the camera, which they believe was Wi-Fi enabled and live shoots video, they found sexually explicit videos.
Police found six videos on the motion-activated camera, four of which show only a man’s torso and below. In the last video, a man, identified later as Anderson, was fixing the view of the spy camera.
After the man gave police the videos, he also told them Anderson had sexually battered him. Another victim had reported the same thing.
One victim recounted how Anderson gave him alcohol when he was younger, presumably a minor, and started giving him a massage, police said. Anderson started massaging the victim’s legs and genital area without consent, then forcefully kissed him.
The victim said he was “completely in shock” and too afraid to move due Anderson’s size and strength, according to the arrest report. Anderson only stopped when his children started knocking on the locked bedroom door.
Another victim told police Anderson promotes himself as a photographer and talent manager, according to the arrest report. The victim saw Anderson as a mentor and went to him about six months ago during a “difficult time” when he was presumably underaged.
All within an hour and a half, Anderson gave him alcohol, cannabis from a pipe and edible cannabis gummies, the victim told police. Anderson then told him he needed to “workout for his modeling career.”
The victim recalls blacking out and waking up naked with Anderson touching his penis, police said.
These victims of Anderson’s alleged sexual assaults told police about a third person who may have been touched by him, police said.
This new victim told police that Anderson invited him to a “cast party” in July, when he may have been underage, police said. While intoxicated, Anderson took him to his house.
There, Anderson gave him a pill for his “hangover” and offered a massage so the victim would not feel sore the next day. The victim said the massage escalated until Anderson pulled down the victim’s pants and massaged his groin area, police said.
The victim described “screaming inside his head for it to stop” but could not speak, police said.
Police interviewed the girlfriend who was in the bathroom when her boyfriend found the hidden camera. She said that her boyfriend partook in a “drinking war,” downing cups of alcohol, with Anderson the day before they found the camera.
She and her boyfriend, who was with them at the time, went to bed after drinking. While the boyfriend fell asleep, she stayed awake.
While she was awake, Anderson came in the room and began rubbing her thigh and vagina. She told police she didn’t want to wake her boyfriend out of fear he would fight Anderson.
When she told Anderson “don’t do that,” he stopped and immediately “fell on the end of the bed and pretended to start snoring,” according to the arrest report.
During a controlled phone call with police, Anderson admitted to the sexual assaults and placing the hidden camera clock in the bathroom because he “wanted to record the drug deals he was doing.”
An executed search warrant also found three hidden cameras inside of an alarm clock, radio and smoke alarm in the trunk of his vehicle. Police were unsure at the time if any images of the victims existed on the cameras.
In an interview with authorities, Anderson admitted to hiding cameras and described the sexual assaults as accidental, saying he used his forearm to only move one victim’s genitals to the side in order to massage his leg. He said he did not remember two of the accounts.
Anderson is facing charges of contributing to the delinquency of minors, two counts of video voyeurism to a person older than 19, sexual battery of a minor and three counts of sexual battery to a person 18 or older.
Anderson is currently held at the Alachua County Detention Center on a $525,000 bond as of Saturday morning.
Howard Anderson
