A
religious education teacher sacked for possessing indecent images of children
should be allowed to return to work in schools, a panel has ruled.
Geoffrey Bettley, 36, was suspended
from a West Yorkshire school in December 2010 after police found nearly 200
child abuse images on his computer.
He accepted a police caution and
was dismissed by the school.
A professional conduct panel has
now ruled the teacher does not "represent a risk to children or young
people".
While this guy may not represent a risk to children, in the eyes of the panel, I think common sense tells us that he shouldn’t be
allowed anywhere near a classroom ever again, it’s not like he clicked on an image
or a link to a website by accident he had nearly 200 images stored on his
computer.
Part of the reason the panel allowed this guy the
opportunity to work in schools again is because the images on his computer were
deemed by the police to be low-level, they have a scale of one to ten and most of
the images he had were a one and some were a three, I say irrelevant he still
took the time to store close to 200 images of child abuse on his computer, the level
of them shouldn’t matter.
While he may well have permission to work in schools
again, hopefully none of them will hire, or even consider hiring, him.
The "low-level" you mention is defined as follows: "Non-erotic and non-sexualised pictures showing children in their underwear, swimming costumes from either commercial sources or family albums. Pictures of children playing in normal settings, in which the context or organisation of pictures by the collector indicates inappropriateness."
ReplyDeleteIn the future, our society will seem as silly as the Victorians with their cow-trousers.
And a "child" can mean an individual 17 years and 364 days old.
ReplyDeleteNeither did he necessarily download the images in the way the vast majority of people will assume he did. The mere act of visiting a website or clicking a link will "download" images to the cache and will remain there unless actively removed.
There are people who have been convicted for having looked at semi-naked or provocative pictures of 16 and 17 year olds because "the context (of their behaviour) indicate(d) a sexual interest in children" (i.e. those under 18). This could mean that they simply visited a site they visited a site whose focus was the sexual attractiveness of 16 and 17 year old actresses and singers. Of course they could have had sex with a 16 or 17 year old girl with no comeback, as long as they don't look at pictures of them scantily clad.
Thought crime?