School may be sued after teacher filmed pupils having sex
ONE OF Britain’s top public schools may be sued after a teacher was jailed for using cameras to spy on pupils.
Jonathan Thomson-Glover, 53, who taught at Clifton College in Bristol for more than 30 years, admitted placing tiny cameras around the school and recording intimate footage of boys.
Thomson-Glover filmed some 120 youngsters at the £30,000-a-year school and his home in Cornwall. Using the cameras he spied on boarders as they had sex and took showers.
Now the school faces legal action by at least one of the victims. Oliver Jeffcott, of the firm Slater and Gordon, said: “The school is potentially liable as the acts took place in the course of his employment.”
Thomson-Glover, of Wadebridge, Cornwall, pleaded guilty when he appeared before Judge David Ticehurst at Taunton Crown Court and was jailed for three years and nine months.
The judge told him: “You are a man looking at a life reduced to rubble as a result of your fatal flaw. You are the author of your own misfortune and there can be little sympathy for you. It is impossible to calculate the harm and damage you may have caused to those who trusted you or were in your care.”
Thomson-Glover was ordered to sign the Sex Offenders’ Register indefinitely and banned from working with children on his release.
He was arrested last year after it was alleged he had installed cameras around the school to spy on boys.
Police said there was no evidence of any contact offences with pupils and no other staff at the school were thought to have been involved.
Mr Thomson-Glover, a bachelor, whose father is a former vicar, was a pupil at Clifton College between 1968 and 1980. He was also head of the East Town accommodation house, an allboys house for day-students.
Clifton College is a co-educational independent school founded in 1862 and has around 720 pupils, a third of them girls.
Famous former pupils, known as Old Cliftonians, include Monty Python star John Cleese, Field Marshal Douglas Haig and the BBC Sports presenter John Inverdale.
The court was told Thomson-Glover first became part of the school at the age of six, as his father was working as a pastor there. He returned to teach at the school and was well regarded.
For the prosecution, Howard Phillips said: “He was a man who had a relaxed attitude and allowed his pupils to smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol and engage in sex on the school premises.
“The parents regarded him as the consummate professional, he appeared very caring, achieved good exam results. But the reality was somewhat different.”
Andrew Langdon QC, representing Thomson-Glover, said his client was remorseful and wanted to seek forgiveness. Mr Langdon said the footage was never shared and the majority of it was never watched. He said pupils filmed engaging in sexual acts were aged 16 or 17 at the time.
Mr Langdon said his client had repressed feelings of homosexuality as a teenager and had been in relationships with women but this drove him to breakdowns and to attempt suicide.
‘The school is potentially liable as the acts took place in the course of his employment’