Tuggerah Primary teacher sentenced over child porn
A PRIMARY teacher with a penchant for pornography has been sentenced after being caught with dozens of images of child abuse material involving victims as young as four.
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A PRIMARY teacher with a penchant for pornography has been sentenced to a nine-month Intensive Corrections Order after being caught with dozens of images of child abuse material involving victims as young as four.
Rhys Bryan McGregor was left red faced after he was sprung looking at something inappropriate on a staffroom computer by his Tuggerah Public School principal in June last year.
The principal was concerned he may have been using the school’s computers to surf the internet for illicit porn so she sought advice from the NSW Education Department.
As a result the staffroom computers were quarantined in a “strong room” before the principal contacted Wyong police three days later.
An IT expert from the NSW Education Department’s Security Unit examined the computers and reported back on August 5 saying they had located temporary internet cache files containing images which “appear to depict naked children ranging from four years to 17 year old”.
Police obtained a warrant and searched the 60-year-old teacher’s Bellevue Cres home at North Avoca on September 27 and seized a USB thumb drive, a laptop and a desktop computer.
The devices contained more than 150 child abuse images including one of a girl, aged 8-10, engaged in an act with a man.
McGregor handed himself in to police in November and was charged with three counts of possessing child abuse material — one for each device on which the images were found.
The teacher pleaded guilty and was sentenced in Wyong Local Court on Monday to a nine-month Intensive Corrections Order for the majority of images found on the thumb drive and two further six-month Intensive Corrections Orders for the laptop and computer. He will serve the orders concurrently.
Police facts tendered to court reveal McGregor was on a deferred salary scheme while on leave, meaning he was “not actively teaching students” at the time of the offence.
The facts revealed he was sprung at the school on a Sunday when his principal popped into the staffroom.
“Upon her entry the witness observed a woman’s profile on the screen,” the police facts stated.
“The accused attempted to block [the principal’s] view from the screen and that the accused appeared to be red in the face and extremely flustered. The accused shut down the computer a short time later.
“It is further noted that police located a large amount of pornography at the home residence including magazines [and] images with file names/or titles ‘teenagers’.”
McGregor resigned in November.
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