A man who secretly filmed female colleagues using the toilet in a care home has escaped jail.

A judge told Graham Bevan that had he not admitted charges, and been found guilty by jury, he would have been sent to prison.

Bradford Crown Court heard how Bevan, 53, had set up a mobile phone to film in communal toilets at the Keighley care home and downloaded the recordings onto his home computer. His crime was uncovered when a colleague heard a “buzzing” sound coming from a bath headrest in the bathroom on December 1, 2011.

The woman, who cannot be named, found a phone taped to the rest. She immediately removed it and told a colleague, but Bevan snatched the phone from her.

Prosecuting Shamaila Qureshi said: “They (the two staff) followed the defendant to find out why he was pressing buttons on the phone. They challenged him as to what he was doing and he said he was deleting everything.”

Police searched Bevan’s home, in Lord Street, Haworth. They found a Dell computer with seven video clips showing four people using the bathroom – three women and a man.

The videos had been filmed several years earlier and were of “an explicit nature”, Miss Qureshi said.

The court heard that the victims said they felt violated and upset that a colleague, whom they trusted, could have filmed them. Mitigating, Arshad Mahmood said Bevan was worried about changes at work and had been having difficulties at home. “They were for his own sexual gratification,” Mr Mahmood said, though the videos were not originally made for that purpose.

Bevan had admitted to two counts of voyeurism and one count of attempting to observe a person doing a private act, without their consent, at an earlier hearing. A letter he had written apologising to his victims was handed to Judge John Potter.

Sentencing, the judge said he took the letter into account. He said the purpose of Bevan downloading the vidoes to his computer was to fulfil his “perverted sexual gratification”.

Judge Potter said: “This, in any view, was an insidious offence which in any view, must have caused distress to your victims when they were told about what had occurred.”

Bevan was made subject to a sexual offences prevention order which means he cannot go to the care home, contact his victims or work in a residential care home. He will be on the sex offenders register for five years and was handed a three-year community order, which included a three-month 9pm to 7am curfew, 100 hours’ unpaid work and a 60-day intensive activity requirement – which may include completing a course for sex offenders.