Description
A college welfare officer and young person's football coach who downloaded thousands of indecent images of children has been jailed.
Daniel Dawson, 36, of Darcy Lever, Bolton, had pleaded guilty to 19 offences of possessing and making indecent images of children.
At Manchester's Minshull Street Crown Court, he was jailed for 12 months.
He was also given a sexual offences prevention order and made to sign the sex offenders register for 10 years.
Police said Dawson was caught in April following an international investigation into the activities of an online retailer based in Canada selling films containing child pornography and indecent images of children.
1.5 million images
When warrants were executed at the Canadian premises, customers from around the world were identified and cases were passed to the relevant police forces.
Greater Manchester Police raided Dawson's home and seized a number of computers and media storage devices and a total of 1.5m images were recovered.
A computer specialist sampled more than 15,000 of these images and identified more than 6,500 indecent images of children aged six to 14 years old.
Due to the sheer volume of indecent images, the specialist could not examine all of the pictures.
Officers also recovered evidence that Dawson had repeatedly searched the internet for indecent images of children.
At the time, Dawson was working as a welfare officer at Glossopdale Community College in Derbyshire and coached at Middleton Lads and Girls FC.
He was suspended from both roles immediately following the initial police involvement.
Dawson previously held similar positions in other schools across the region.
There was no evidence to suggest Dawson committed any offences against the children he came into contact with in a professional capacity, police said.