December 2002 Ex-Lakes teacher downloaded child porn images A windermere schoolteacher has been ordered to register as a sex offender for the next five years after downloading indecent images of children off the internet. Christopher David Bench, 44, who is now living in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, was told by magistrates in Kendal that he must also complete a three-year community rehabilitation order. Bench, who has since resigned from his post as a teacher at The Lakes School, Troutbeck Bridge, appeared at South Lakeland Magistrates Court on Tuesday for sentence. He pleaded guilty to six charges of making indecent photographs of children, and he asked for 36 similar offences to be taken into consideration when being sentenced. Prosecutor Victoria Rose told the court that police executed a search warrant at the defendant’s home at Belle Isle View, Windermere. He admitted that the photographs found on the hard drive of his home computer had come from the internet. Mrs Rose explained: “The images showed children, many of whom appeared to be as young as four or five-years-old. “They were both male and female children and were being subjected to serious sexual abuse by males.” Mrs Rose said that although most of the images retrieved showed pre-pubescent boys and girls, two photographs featured a girl who, in her opinion, could have been as young as three-years-old. She said his arrest was prompted by Operation Alarm, a nationwide police investigation, which led to dozens of arrests across the country. This stemmed from inquiries by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in America, which passed the information on to Cumbria Police, an earlier hearing was told. Bench, who was smartly dressed and backed by a number of supporters in court, remained impassive asdetails of the offences were outlined to magistrates. His solicitor, Justine Foden, explained how her client had accessed the photographs in early 2001. “He thought he had put these activities behind him, but obviously they have come to light and he has to deal with the consequences,” she told the court “What he did was access an image from the internet. He did not create the image and was not the photographer, and these images were retrieved from the automatic save part of the hard drive. They had not been saved onto a disc.” She said he acknowledged there was a chance he could come across such material when he chose to access certain sites, but that he had found “the worst images extremely distasteful”. Urging magistrates not to send him to prison, she said he was of previous good character, and had been a “loyal and dedicated teacher” who would be a “loss” to the school. She said he would regret the offences “for the rest of his days” and would never be able to pursue a career in teaching. Offering guidance to magistrates before they retired to consider the sentence, court clerk Gerald Reece told them of previous case law, and of a warning to magistrates by the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Woolf, that prisons were overcrowded. Sentencing the defendant, magistrate John Chew said: “We have seen the images concerned and we are sure any right-thinking member of the public would be appalled at what they portray.” But he added that magistrates were satisfied that Bench had downloaded the images for his own use and had no intention to distribute them. The order will involve Bench going on a sex offenders’ programme and was imposed for the maximum period available to magistrates.