A married Sutton dad and private girls' school IT technician has been jailed for distributing obscene images of young girls, all aged under 12 years old.

Sick Richard Emmerson, 22, of Rutland Court in Wellesley Road, who operated under the nickname Pee-Pedo-UK, was jailed for two and a half years.

Kingston Crown Court heard during Friday's sentencing that girls at Greenacre School in Sutton Lane, Banstead, had been at "high risk" from accidentally coming across any of the 15,000 images stored in his work station on the school network.

The fee-paying school located on the Sutton border, which has 411 pupils and charges between £740 and £2,480 a term, has since spent £5,000 on cleaning its computer system. IT is taught to A level, AS level and GCSE pupils.

Police officers at the Obscene Publications and Internet Unit at the Met say they suspect they caught Emmerson just as he was preparing to install cameras in the toilets at the school.

Church-going Emmerson, who began his job in September 2000, was nailed after police discovered him boasting of his stored images on an internet pre-teen chat room.

Emmerson was at home with his wife and in-laws when he was first arrested on February 10 this year.

At the time he denied all knowledge but following the discovery of images on his work computer, he pleaded guilty on October 10 to 17 counts of distributing indecent still and moving images of children.

The court heard he would spend up to five hours a day distributing the images some of which dated back to 1999.

Defence counsel Patrick Gibbs, who told the court Emmerson spent most of his spare time in church with his wife and her family, said: "There came a time when it was impossible for him to continue to lie to his wife, who he loves more than anything. He is only 22, has lost his wife and whether he will ever see his son remains to be seen."

Mr Gibbs told the court his client had not breached the trust of the children in his care as he had virtually no contact with them.

He added: "The school was the place where he could be alone with a computer. There is a certain amount of bravado in one of the email conversations, but it is a different thing to put it into practise."

But Judge Michael Hucker said: "It is obvious that the risk of those children seeing those images was high, and you took that risk."

He added a three-year sex offender treatment order to Emmerson's sentence following his release from prison. He will also be placed on the sex offenders' register.

A statement from Greenacre School said: "The headmistress is relieved the case regarding the school's former ICT technician has now been concluded and that the school can continue to concentrate the efforts of staff and pupils on the business of education.

"The school has co-operated fully with the police investigation and followed the appropriate procedures to ensure the ongoing safety of the pupils at school, none of whom were involved.

"All our information and communications technology has been replaced in recent months and both staff and pupils are benefiting from our state-of-the-art equipment, which has extensive security systems in place."

Inspector Brian Ward told the Guardian outside court: "We have clear evidence that Emmerson was bragging and preparing to set up a live feed from the school, which the girls would have been unaware of.

"Parents have been informed and following a thorough search of the school we are confident that nothing has been put in position."

1:00pm Thursday 21st November 2002

Print   Email this