- Perth high school teacher sentenced to two years and nine months in prison
- He was caught with hundreds of photos of young female students in swimwear
- The 62-year-old had worked at the school for 16 years prior to being caught
- He had stockpiled the inappropriate photos over an eight-year period
A physical education high school teacher in Perth is has been jailed for secretly taking hundreds photos of female students in swimwear.
The 62-year-old man was sentenced to two years and nine months on Friday, after another teacher caught him taking the inappropriate photos last December.
The man, who had been a teacher at the school for 16 years, was an ‘unoffical photographer’ for school events and exursions, The West reports.
District Court Judge Vicki Stewart said the images were taken in a ‘deliberate and secret’ manner.
A 62-year-old high school teacher in Perth is has been jailed for secretly taking hundreds photos of female students in swimwear (stock image)
‘There were multiple victims and your conduct was deliberate and repeated,’ she said.
The photographs were predominately of female students’ breasts and behinds, with some students as young as 13 years old.
Police found more than 44,000 photos of child exploitation and hundreds of videos, some of which depicted young children being abused.
The 62-year-old had collected the images over an eight year period on a USB labelled ‘girls’.
The teacher told the court he was not sexually aroused by the photos because they were ‘just kids’.
The teacher reportedly admitted to his psychologist that he paid a monthly subscription to download the pornographic material from a website, claiming he developed an ‘obsession’.
The man, who had worked at the school for 16 years, took photos of female students in their swimwear (stock image)
The teacher’s lawyer told the court he would not ‘do well’ in prison after suffering three heart attacks, two kidney transplants and skin cancers.
However Judge Stewart said his offences were too serious to warrant anything less than time behind bars.
He pleaded guilty to possessing child exploitation material and indecently recording children and was declared a reportable sex offender.