A new lawsuit against Barry University School of Law claims the school was negligent in hiring and retaining a former law professor who is facing criminal charges of child porn possession and video voyeurism.

In a lawsuit filed Monday by attorney Amir Hayavi, Kali McElroy accused Glen Peter Ahlers of taking “obscene and inappropriate photographs” of McElroy while she was attending his class as a student.

Last week, Ahlers was arrested for video voyeurism, several months after he was arrested and charged with 50 criminal counts of child porn possession.

The lawsuit alleged that Ahlers was arrested and subsequently convicted of misdemeanor secret peeping in 1988, while Ahlers was employed at the Wake Forest University School of Law.

“The underlying conduct involved Ahlers secretly looking through the bedroom of a woman,” the lawsuit stated.

Forsyth County Clerk of Court records obtained by News 6 show that Ahlers was convicted of the peeping charge and sentenced to probation.

News 6 reached out to Wake Forest University Tuesday, but a response was not returned at the time this story was published.

“We’ve got an issue here,” Hayavai said in an interview with News 6, referring to Barry University’s decision to hire Ahlers. “They either knew or should have known.”

The lawsuit accuses Barry University of negligence, claiming that “a reasonable and appropriately conducted pre-employment investigation…would have revealed, or should have revealed, Ahlers’s prior Secret Peeping conviction and the conduct underlying it.”

News 6 emailed Barry University twice Tuesday, asking a series of questions about Ahlers’ hiring and employment at the school. A response was not returned at the time of this story’s publication.

“In my view this is a systemic issue at Barry University,” Hayavi said.

In February, amid their investigation into the child porn allegations, deputies with the Orange County Sheriff’s Office executed a search warrant at Ahlers’ office on the Barry University campus.

Deputies also seized Ahlers’ cell phone, which resulted in the discovery of four images that depicted a woman “wearing a dress sitting at a desk with one leg crossed over the other,” according to Ahlers’ arrest affidavit from February.

“In the series of the four photographs, Glen was zooming in on the female’s groin, attempting to photograph her genitals or the clothing covering her genitals,” the affidavit stated.

At the time, the affidavit said the identity of the woman was not known, but that it appeared to be a female student at Barry University.

But late Tuesday afternoon, News 6’s Mike Valente obtained a probable cause supporting document in Ahlers’ video voyeurism case. The document confirmed that McElroy was the person in the photographs seized from Ahlers’ phone in February.

“This is something – a trauma – that she endures every day,” Hayavi said, when Valente asked about how McElroy is doing today. “And that type of resilience doesn’t come easily. And I’m very proud of her.”

McElroy did not want to do an interview Tuesday, but she was comfortable with News 6 using a picture of her on television.

“She’s a mother and she’s a mother to a daughter, and her position is, ‘If I don’t do this for myself, what would my daughter think?’” Hayavi said.