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	St Albans Teacher's Child Porn Shame after Computer Slip By Alex Lewis St. Albans and Harpenden Review September 30, 2010 http://www.stalbansreview.co.uk/news/8424891.St_Albans_teacher_s_child_porn_shame_after_computer_slip/ A TECHNOLOGY teacher at Nicholas Breakspear School in St Albans was caught with thousands of indecent pictures of children after he handed in his laptop without deleting the contents. Jonathon Collings, 60, gave his laptop back to the school when he retired at the end of the last term. He thought he had deleted the files, but staff preparing the computer for another teacher found indecent pictures and alerted police. Officers raided his home in Greenfield Close, Dunstable on September 1, finding 70,000 illegal images on USB sticks, discs and a desktop computer. Collings even made printed collages of the indecent pictures. Prosecutor Sally Mealing-McLeod told St Albans Crown Court today that most of the pictures were relatively innocuous, but some were in the most serious categories. She said: "When interviewed, he said it had become like a habit which he could not give up. "He was proud of the workmanship in putting some of the pictures in his folders. "He said he had collected images over a period of ten years. He thought he had wiped the laptop that he have given back to the school and said it was a stupid thing to have done." Defending, Sarah Lewis said her client had "lost his moral compass" after the death of his wife, but now regretted his offences. Judge John Plumstead sentenced Collings, who pleaded guilty to possessing indecent pictures and films of children, to a three-year community order requiring him to join a sex offenders' programme. He said: "You must go away and reflect on the fact that a a whole set of a generation of parents have trusted you with their children. "They would never have done that if they had known what was going on in your head."
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