Locations
Bassett Wood Drive, Southampton, Hampshire, SO16
Description
A RETIRED Hampshire teacher who downloaded hundreds of sordid images of young girls has been spared an immediate prison sentence.
Kenneth Dunn, 58, claimed he had become obsessed in a desperate search for indecent pictures of himself taken 50 years before at his boarding school, which he feared might have been posted on the Internet.
He alleged that he wanted to find them so he could confront his abuser.
However Judge Derwin Hope slammed his defence, saying it defied belief.
Dunn, of Bassett Wood Drive, Bassett, Southampton, had pleaded guilty to 21 specimen charges of possessing indecent images. He was arrested after police raided his home with a search warrant, and when told of their suspicions that he had been downloading the gruesome images, he turned white and officers feared he was going to faint.
Prosecutor Roderick Blain told the city crown court that, when two computers were analysed, more than 1,400 images of girls from the ages of 12 down to babies were discovered.
The father of three, who taught electronics and physics at Taunton's College in Southampton before he retired this year, had trawled through notorious hard core sites to access the material.
Judge Derwin Hope, who read two psychiatric reports, accepted Dunn had been suffering from a depressive illness that had affected his character.
Dunn received a 12-month suspended sentence and has to attend an Internet sex group programme.
He has been banned from residing in a house with any child, working with children, and using a computer or online message boards without the approval of his supervising officer. He must also register as a sex offender for ten years.
In mitigation, James Leonard said that as a result of the case his character was in tatters and he had been publicly humiliated.
"The effect on him and his devoted wife has been catastrophic. He had been held in such high esteeem and the effect has been as bad as it could conceivably have got.
"At the time he was suffering from a major depressive illness and was simply not himself."