Lifetime teaching ban for man with cache of child sex images on phone

STANDARDS BODY RULES ON STRING OF OFFENCES

- By RUCSANDRA MOLDOVEANU

A FORMER teacher has received a lifetime ban from the profession after committing a string of sexual offences.

Stuart Street, 29, joined Queen Elizabeth's Academy, Mansfield, as a PE teacher in December 2019.

He was arrested when arriving at the school on October 12, 2021, as police had received information he was involved in the distribution of an indecent image of a child via a social media app.

Searches of his electronic devices revealed that Street had “a number of indecent extreme images” on his phone.

One image was of a young girl known to Street which was originally innocent in nature but had been manipulated to appear sexual.

A Teaching Regulation Agency (TRA) panel reviewed Street's case earlier this month and found that none of the images found by the police were of pupils at schools where Street had taught. Indecent images had also been shared from Street's phone via messaging apps.

Conversations on the phone showed Street had pretended to be a young girl and asked the recipient to continue sending indecent images.

Street had also asked the recipient what it was like to have sex with a child.

The former secondary school teacher denied any involvement with the material found on his phone. However, he was charged in January 2022 with a number of offences relating to indecent and extreme images.

Pleading not guilty at Nottingham Crown Court, he claimed his phone had been hacked before changing his pleas to guilty.