Child porn teacher loses sentence appeal

4:31pm Tuesday 4th December 2007

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A primary school deputy head who shared porno-graphic images of a young girl with his lover has failed to get his sentenced reduced.

Alastair Cameron Clark, 49, of Free Lane, Helmshore, pleaded guilty to five counts of making indecent photos of a child at Preston Crown Court in April this year.

He was sentenced to a six-month jail term, suspended for two years, given a supervision order for two years, ordered to attend a sex offender prog-rammes, and banned from being with children under 16 unaccompanied for 10 years.

His girlfriend, Alina Bibby, 57, a reception class teacher, received the same sentence after also pleading guilty to similar charges, as well as five counts of distributing indecent images.

Lawyers for Clark challenged the sentence at London's Court of Appeal as "manifestly excessive" and "wrong in principle", arguing that six months was too long, even though it was suspended.

They also said he should have got a lesser punishment than Bibby, whose behaviour, it was alleged, was worse.

The judges were also told that the banning order is affecting his relationship with his own children, whom he cannot see unsupervised.

But Mr Justice Butterfield, sitting with Lord Justice Hooper, said the difference between Bibby and Clark was "vanishingly small", and the sentence was more than justified.

He added that a pre-sentence report had noted that, without treatment, Clark, of previous good character, was a "significant risk of harm to children".

The court heard that Clark and Bibby had a "secret deviant sexual fantasy" about abusing young children.

It was said that this developed after they began a five-year affair in the late 1990s after working at the same school in Oswald-twistle.

The affair became more and more sordid, resulting in Bibby texting pictures of a girl aged under five to Clark's mobile, the court was told.

In September 2006, Clark went into a branch of Carphone Warehouse to exchange a broken phone, and a shop assistant noticed disturbing images when transferring data from the old phone to the new one.

Police were called, and found a number of indecent images of a young girl on Clark's phone.

They had been sent by Bibby.

When he was in custody, Bibby sent him a "grossly obscene" text message about taking a class of youngsters for PE.