Head teacher of Ramsgate school says pupils were not in former governor’s indecent images haul

Turner (pictured) did not have indecent images of pupils, says head teacher John Letts

The head teacher of a Ramsgate school is assuring parents none of its pupils were in indecent images hoarded by  a former governor.

Former church warden and governor at St Ethelbert’s Catholic Primary School, David Turner, 72, was jailed last week for 16 months for importing a lifelike child sex doll and for having more than 30,000 indecent sex images of children on his home computer.

Head teacher John Letts, says a report on BBC South East stating pupils were in photos found on Turner’s computer resulted in parents being caused unnecessary alarm about the possibility of their children being among those photographed.

The BBC South East report said: “Among the thousands of indecent images of children police found on his computer were some of the schoolchildren he was supposed to be looking after.”

The report was, correctly, referring to photos of pupils found on Turner’s computer but failed to make clear that these were not indecent images.

Mr Letts said: “I saw the broadcast and it was immediately obvious that some of our parents would be extremely concerned. I completely understand why they would be worried.”

Mr Letts said he felt the report implied the school was “negligent in basic safeguarding” and had damaged its “public respectability.”

A spokesman for BBC SE said: “It’s been confirmed by the police that there were images of schoolchildren alongside the thousands of indecent images. We should have made this distinction clearer in our report.”

A statement from the National Crime Agency, which carried out the investigation into Turner’s activities, confirmed pupils were not in the indecent images.

Hazel Stewart, specialist advice and operations team manager, said: ‘There were no indecent images of pupils from the school found on any of former governor David Turner’s seized technology.”