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A man police say sneaked into a junior high school girls locker room and disrobed will be charged with a felony crime for the first time, despite a lengthy history of similar conduct.

A track coach spotted Brian Richard Lee, 47, naked and touching himself in the girls locker room at Sand Ridge Junior High on Tuesday, police said. Lee has been convicted at least five times for similar offenses, but a change to the lewdness statute in 2009 is allowing prosecutors to pursue more serious charges.

Weber County Attorney Dee Smith said his office will charge Lee with third-degree felony lewdness this week.

That's welcome news to Roy Police Chief Greg Whinham, who said he has been dealing with Lee since 1992.

"Every time he does it, he goes into a school, into where female students are going to come across him doing some pretty significant sexual things," Whinham said.

Whinham said it was in fact Lee who lawmakers had in mind when the statute was changed.

"It's a huge deal," Whinham said of the change. "We can book and arrest for a much more significant offense that has better mechanisms hopefully to keep the community safe."

That includes the possibility of being placed on the sex offender registry with a felony conviction for lewdness.

In 2008, Lee was sentenced to two years in jail for hiding behind a shower curtain in the Brighton High School locker room as girls changed for a dance performance.

A girl spotted Lee crouching behind the curtain and when another girl pulled open the curtain, Lee put a finger to his lips to quiet her and then fled. He was caught in the school's parking lot with a tube of petroleum jelly in the pocket of his sweatpants.

He had been previously convicted on at least four other occasions for similar peeping crimes at schools in Davis and Weber counties.

Despite his history, Lee was kept off the sex offender registry because his victims had all been at least 15 — a year older than prosecutors could charge criminals for the registrable offense of lewdness involving a child.

"We certainly would have charged him with that if we could have," then Salt Lake County District Attorney spokeswoman Alicia Cook said at the time.

In 2009, lawmakers changed the statute allowing prosecutors to file felony charges if an offender has two or more lewdness convictions even if they do not involve a child.

"On the third time we can make lewdness a felony," Smith said Wednesday. "That's what we'll do."

On Tuesday, no girls were in the locker room when Lee was spotted around 3 p.m., but Whinham said an after-school group was about to make its way inside. A female track coach working in her office saw Lee and went to get help. Another track coach then chased down Lee, who had put on clothes, about a block and a half away, police said. —

Lewdness law changes

Lawmakers in 2009 approved changes to the state's lewdness statute that allows prosecutors to file third-degree felony charges against repeat offenders. Roy Police Chief Greg Whinham said 47-year-old Brian Richard Lee was the impetus for that legislation.