November 2014 Former Forest of Dean primary school teacher jailed for distributing child abuse images Former Forest of Dean primary school teacher Michael Brown has been exposed as a paedophile who distributed child abuse images by email. Brown, 31, was jailed for 20 months at Gloucester Crown Court on Tuesday after he admitted 11 offences of making, possessing and distributing illegal images and videos of children. At the time of his offences, Brown, who admits having a sexual interest in boys aged six-11, was teaching at Ellwood Primary School, Coleford. He was sacked after his arrest and there is no suggestion he abused children in his care there. Brown, formerly of Lydbrook, but now of Hereford Terrace, Leominster, Herefordshire, pleaded guilty to six charges of making indecent images, three of possessing them and two of distributing them to others by email. Prosecutor Janine Wood said that on April 30 this year Lancashire Police alerted colleagues in Gloucestershire that two emails had been sent by Brown on his Gmail account which contained child abuse pictures. Police went to Brown’s Lydbrook home with a search warrant on May 29 and he immediately admitted he had child abuse images on his computers and had emailed some of it out. “He confirmed he was employed as a schoolteacher,” said Mrs Wood. “A Dropbox account was accessed by the police and they found 123 still and video images of children at category A (which portray the worst kind of sexual abuse), 291 catgeory B and 494 category C.” More than 2,000 more images were found on a separate laptop. Judge William Hart said: “But this was the tip of the iceberg because he admitted he had been accessing these images for over ten years and had been deleting and replacing files over those years.” Mrs Wood added: “He said he had a sexual interest in children and had had one since he had been in senior school. He said he enjoyed looking at indecent images of children.” Steve Young, defending, said he accepted there had to be a prison sentence but he urged the judge to consider suspending it. It was largely thanks to Brown’s own confession that the police knew about the length and extent of his offences, he said. And there was absolutely no evidence that Brown had ever interfered with any children he taught. Brown had contacted a local organisation for help with his problem, said Mr Young. Jailing Brown, Judge Hart said that because there was no evidence of him abusing children at his school he did not treat his employment as a teacher as an aggravating feature of the offences. “For a teacher of the young to derive sexual pleasure and enjoyment from the images involved in this case which depict the gross abuse of the young is worrying indeed,” said the judge. “But there is no question of you having abused any of the children in your care.” He added: “People must recognise that if they pass these images on to other like-minded people an immediate prison sentence cannot be avoided.” The judge made a sexual offences prevention order against Brown and ordered him to sign the sex offender register for ten years. Vicki Cole, headteacher at Ellwood Primary School, said: “When the allegations were brought to the school’s attention we acted immediately to suspend Mr Brown and his employment has since been terminated. Throughout the investigation we worked closely with the Gloucestershire Safeguarding Children Board and the police and no charges relate to students at Ellwood Primary past or present. Our safeguarding processes are robust and effective and nothing is more important to us than making sure our students are safe at school.”