A PRIMARY school teacher allegedly introduced pornography to his school's network by accident, the General Teaching Council for Wales was told today.
Robert Adams was the IT coordinator and a teacher at Deighton Primary School in Tredegar when he offered to back up the school's files during maintenance of the computer network by copying them and putting them back when work was complete.
But when the computers were working again on October 8 2009, nursery school teacher Jayne Edwards discovered a folder called "Glam" when looking for some files in the school's shared storage network.
Inside she found thumbnail images of naked women. DC Blair Jones from Gwent Police went through the files as well as Adam's home computers and memory sticks to look for any evidence of wrongdoing.
He told the General Teaching Council for Wales hearing at the Parc Hotel in Cardiff today it was possible "a folder called Glam was copied to the server."
He said it was possible Adams had meant to copy the folder to another memory stick.
One of the images found on the school server was what he believed to be a level one indecent image of a child, DC Jones said, explaining this was of a girl who appeared to be 15 or 16 who was partially naked. The other files on the school network all related to adults.
A video of a girl who he said appeared to be 15 or 16 exposing her breasts was also found in the recycle bin of Adams' laptop, he said, which had been deleted in January 2009. The day after the images were discovered, Adams handed in the memory stick he said he had used to back up the school files.
It had been wiped but after forensic examination police were able to detect the "Glam" folder had existed on it at one point, DC Jones told the teaching council hearing.
A memory stick containing "Glam" had also been inserted into Adams' home laptop and PC at some point, he said. Roger Fawke, head teacher at the time of the alleged incident, said Adams had always seemed a trustworthy and enthusiastic person, adding he was "one of if not the best classroom professionals I have worked with" in a statement read to the hearing.
After hearing Adams give evidence in private, tomorrow the GTCW will decide whether they find the allegation of introducing pornographic images to the school network proved and if so whether this amounts to unacceptable professional conduct.
Proceeding.
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