A SUPPLY teacher has been sacked and sent on a sex offenders’ course after he was caught downloading hundreds of images of young boys suffering sexual abuse.

Matthew Edwards was working at a school in South Devon when officers from the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children in America alerted British police to an image he had uploaded to Snapchat.

The image showed a boy aged 11 to 14 in a sexual pose and sparked an investigation in which Edwards was traced to his home by his IP address.

Police seized two phones and a tablet and recovered 1,214 movies or still images, of which 262 were in the worst category, effectively showing child rape.

All were of boys and most were aged 11 to 15, although there were also movies showing boys aged about five suffering very serious abuse.

There was also evidence of him trying to communicate sexually with young people and selling indecent images on the internet, but it was not strong enough to justify a prosecution.

Edwards told police that he posed no risk to the primary school children at the school where he worked and a safeguarding inquiry confirmed there were no complaints about his behaviour.

He had no previous convictions and had passed background checks before getting the job. He was dismissed as a result of the police inquiry and will now be prohibited from working with children by the Disclosure and Barring Service.

Edwards, aged 25, from Paignton, admitted three offences of making, by downloading, and three of possessing indecent images of children and was jailed for 12 months, suspended for two years by Judge David Evans at Exeter Crown Court.

He was also sent on a 40-session sex offenders’ treatment programme with 20 additional days of rehabilitation activities, ordered to pay £425 costs, and put on the sex offenders’ register for ten years.

The judge made a Sexual Harm Prevention Order which restricts Edwards’s online activity and allow the police to monitor his use of the internet.

The judge told him: ‘You were engaged in this sort of online activity over a significant number of months. You began significantly in advance of the Covid pandemic so this was not a product of lockdown isolation.

‘There was other social media activity which gave the police real cause for concern about the people you were conversing with online and what you had in mind to do with these images, so it is fortunate you were stopped when you were.

‘It seems there are positive aspects of your character and promise for the future. This activity brought to a halt one career option but it seems you have already obtained alternative employment.”

Mr Herc Ashworth, prosecuting, said British police were alerted to Edwards activity on Snapchat and raided the house where he lived with his parents in December 2020.

The images were found on a phone and tablet but the memory of another iPhone had been wiped by it being reset to factory settings. There were 167 accessible and 95 inaccessible images or movies at Category A, which showed penetrative abuse.

The remaining images were in lesser categories and 519 of them were accessible. They had been downloaded over almost two years.

Mr Ashworth said: ‘Evidence suggested he had communicated with young people in a sexual way and had distributed indecent images for payment but that evidence has been deemed to be insufficient to charge him with more serious offences.

‘He was interviewed. At the time he was a supply teacher in South Devon. He said there was no safeguarding issues with the children he taught, who were aged four to 11.’

Miss Sarah Evans, defending, urged the Judge to follow the recommendations of a probation report which said he was remorseful and would benefit from attending a treatment course.