Mark Langford 55

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A 55-year-old former Suffolk teacher with an “entrenched sexual interest in children” has been jailed for nine years and two months for sexual assaulting a vulnerable former pupil.

Mark Langford met the girl while he was a middle school teacher in Suffolk, but he only began sexually abusing her after a chance meeting on a beach when she was 15, Ipswich Crown Court heard.

Marc Brown, prosecuting, said the victim had a number of problems which made her vulnerable to abuse.

He said Langford had sent her fantasy stories and pictures of himself in his underwear.

“The sexual contact between the defendant and the victim was born out of an imbalance of power and he took advantage of her youth, naivety and sexual immaturity and groomed her,” said Mr Brown.

He said Langford had picked the girl up from school and had groped her and put his hands inside her underwear.

The court heard he had also attempted to persuade her what she should tell the police if they contacted her.

Mr Brown said police officers had found indecent images of children on Langford’s electronic devices and on-line conversations with other people with a sexual interest in children in which he described having had a "lucky perv moment" when he had looked up a pupil’s skirt when she was bending down in class and commenting: “It’s going to be a fun year”.

He also said he "a lot of kinks" that wouldn't be approved of and how shocked his pupils would be if they knew he liked looking at indecent images of children younger than them.

Langford of Ingleton Camforth, North Yorkshire, admitted eight offences of indecency with a child, two offences of indecent assault and one offence of attempting to pervert the course of justice.

He also admitted three offences of making indecent images of children, possessing 109 extreme pornographic images, possessing 199 prohibited images of children and distributing indecent images of children.

The charges of making indecent images of children relate to 654 indecent images of children and 30 movies in the most serious level A category, 514 still images in category B and 1,528 still images and 11 movies in the least serious level C category which had been downloaded over a period of six years.

Judge Martyn Levett described Langford as a dangerous offender with "an entrenched sexual interest in children" and jailed him for nine years and two months with an extended licence period of four years and eight months.

He was also ordered to sign the sex offenders’ register for life and was made the subject of an indefinite sexual harm prevention order.

In a statement read to the court the victim described the offences as “abhorrent “ and said Langford “disgusted her to the core”.

She described him as “devious and manipulative” and said she was haunted by the way he had sexually abused her.

Juliet Donovan for Langford said he had been a maths and science teacher for 25 years and was genuinely remorseful.

She said that since his arrest he’d lost his wife, family, friends, and home and had sought help from a child protection charity.