Child porn teacher who dodged jail is banned from all schools
A TEACHER at Prince Charles’s old school who dodged jail for downloading vile child porn images has been banned f r om t he classroom. Samuel Henley, who taught maths at t he prestigious Gordonstoun s chool, was sacked from the £32,000-a-year independent school after sexual images of boys as young as eight were found on his computer.
One of the disgusting pictures was headlined ‘sweet boys kissing’ and included images of young boys engaging in sexual activity.
There were also videos on the computer of teenage boys performing sex acts on one another, though
‘Necessary to protect the public’
none of the children involved are thought to have been students at the 600-pupil campus, near Elgin, Moray.
The images were found on a computer at his parents’ home in July 2010.
Henley then pleaded guilty to just six charges on the day he was due to stand trial for 30 charges of making i ndecent i mages of children.
At a hearing at Chester Crown Court in February this year, Judge Elgan Edwards told Henley, who had no previous convictions, that the offences were not serious enough to send him to prison and he was sentenced to a two-year conditional discharge.
The teacher, who taught at Gordonstoun between 2009 and 2010, was also ordered to sign the sex offenders register for the next five years.
Henley is also the subject of a sex offenders’ prevention order, which means he is disqualified from working with children for the next five years.
Now Henley, who failed appear at the General Teaching Counsel for Scotland ( GTCS) disciplinary hearing in Edinburgh on Thursday, has been struck from the teaching register.
In its determination, the GTCS stated: ‘ The Panel considered the nature and severity of the Respondent’s conviction to be fundamentally incompatible with him being a registered teacher.
‘Accordingly, the Panel determined that the complaint found proved represents conduct that fell significantly short of the standards expected of a registered teacher and that the respondent was therefore unfit to teach.
‘There was no evidence before the Panel that would allow it to reach the conclusion that the conduct was remediable, had been remedied or whether or not that conduct was likely to recur. The Panel also noted... the terms of the conviction dictate t hat t he respondent is barred from working with children for a period of five years.
‘In addition, the Panel had regard to the public interest and was of the view that in light of the nature and seriousness of the conviction in this case, a finding of unfitness to teach was necessary in order to protect the public namely, to protect pupils, to protect the reputation of the teaching profession and GTCS as a regulator and to protect and uphold proper standards.’