FARLEY, Mo. — A Platte County man is going to jail for putting a hidden camera in his stepdaughter’s bedroom.

Charles McCardie told jurors he liked watching his stepdaughter, without her or her mother knowing.

A Platte County judge sentenced McCardie , 47, to a year in the county jail for invasion of privacy. McCardie admitted to installing and monitoring a hidden camera in then 16-year old Alex Prevost’s room for a year.

Prevost was at home the summer before her junior year of high school flipping through the channels on her TV, when she noticed something odd.

“I saw a room and I was like, that’s weird, it looks like my room,” Prevost said.

She quickly realized it was streaming surveillance of her bedroom. The reason no one noticed the camera is because it was so small.

Prosecutors said McCredie replaced the red light in the smoke detector with the hidden camera.

“I actually figured out it was the smoke detector, cause I put my finger over the hole where the red light used to be and you couldn’t see anything anymore, so I was like, that’s wonderful, there’s a camera in my room,” Prevost said.

McCardie told the court it was never intended as extra security to protect the teen.

“He said when he watched these videos, it was as if he wasn’t even watching his own daughter. That to me, makes this man really a sick voyeur,” Eric Zahnd, Platte County Prosecutor, said.

But McCardie has no history of sexual crimes and he’s a town leader in Farley. In fact, he even has a street named after him.

“For me it was like how could he see me like that, how could he even betray my trust like that. I was just furious. I’m glad he’s taken responsibility for what he’s done,” Prevost said.

According to Missouri law, invasion of privacy is not a sex crime. That means McCardie will not be registered as a sex offender when he is released from prison.own.