Description
Eliot Easterby, 44, was given a three year community order when he appeared for sentence at Southampton Crown Court following his conviction last month.
Jurors had heard how police armed with a search warrant arrived at his home at 6.45am on January 22 last year, following a tip off from Canadian police as part of a major international operation.
In a four and a half hour search, they found ten DVDs and examined his computer, a hard drive and three memory sticks on which they discovered almost 700 images.
Almost 300 had been viewed on the computer but deleted. Another 374 had been downloaded and stored.
The prosecution accepted the images were of the least serious category.
DVDs included Water Wiggles and More Water Wiggles, showing boys cavorting in paddling pools.
They also discovered a hoard of boys underwear beneath his bed, which had been left behind when he took scouts on trips as leader of Hamble Sea Scouts.
It took jurors less an hour to convict Easterby, who taught maths at Sholing Technology College and has written teenage ghost stories, guilty on 13 counts of possessing and making indecent images and not guilty of one other charge.
He had denied all the allegations.Passing sentence today, Judge Peter Henry said the jury had in his opinion quite rightly convicted him of the charges that involved boys aged between 8 and 15.