A primary school teaching assistant was part of a paedophile network exchanging child pornography, a court was told today.
Joseph Duffy, 19, from Thornaby, was working as a volunteer teaching assistant on a one-to-one basis with nine to 10-year-olds helping them to read.
He was arrested after US authorities tipped-off CEOP, the British police’s Child Exploitation On-line Protection unit, that he was using an internet site which allows child porn watchers to contact others.
Prosecutor Christopher Rose told Teesside Crown Court that Duffy later admitted to Cleveland Police officers that he had been using the site and also Skype for two years to share and exchange videos.
The school was not named in court but it was referred to as “a local primary school”.
Mr Rose told the judge: “He knew that he had a sexual attraction to children, and he accepted that he posed a risk to children.”
Duffy said that the only way to get new images was to exchange them.
He said that there were periods of intense distribution of indecent images of children once a week up to the serious category of Level 4 and beyond.
Police executed search warrants at the homes of his parents who lived separately on September 13 last year.
They arrested him and seized a laptop, iPhone and memory sticks.
They had to obtain a court order from a judge to get him to disclose the passwords for the iPhone.
The laptop had files which were indicative of child porn,and he had been regularly cleaning images on the hardware. There was also evidence from the Skype account of file sharing of child porn.
Police technical experts recovered images of young boys from six memory sticks, and there was further evidence on the iPhone.
He admitted that he had also used his father’s laptop for his activities.
Duffy said that he began with pornography when he was 13, and as he got older he realised that he was sexually attracted to boys aged 11 to 19.
Mr Rose added: “He had clearly built up a network of people with whom he was sharing these videos over a lengthy period.”
Duffy, who had no previous convictions and was a first-year undergraduate studying Maths at Greenwich University, avoided jail after his barrister said he could be helped by the Internet Sex Offenders treatment programme.
Andrew White said that an immediate prison sentence would be disastrous for Duffy who would be locked up with other sex offenders.
Mr White said that Duffy once had ambitions to become a teacher, adding: “He clearly needs help.
“He recognises that there is a problem and he is 100% committed to receiving help”.
Judge Peter Bowers told Duffy: “I accept that you have shown as much remorse as you possibly can and have expressed as much insight as one can expect at this stage.”
Duffy, of Kimble Drive, Thornaby, was given an 18 months jail sentence suspended for two years with supervision and the Sex Offender’s treatment programme, ordered to register as a sex offender for 10 years, and also given a Sexual Offence’s Prevention Order limiting his use of the Internet.
He pleaded guilty to distributing indecent images of children on July 23 last year, and two charges of possession for show on September 13 last year.
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