A PRIMARY school inspector found guilty of child pornography charges told a jury he had a compulsion to download files from the internet but would then later delete them without looking at the contents.

John Tyler, 52, a former head teacher at West Hill Junior School at Dartford, was branded ‘arrogant and self-possessed’ by Judge Timothy Nash at Canterbury Crown Court.

The judge remanded Tyler, of Heathview Crescent, Dartford, in custody for reports until July 16.

Judge Nash told Tyler’s counsel, Maria Dineen, that had Tyler been convicted of just the first 10 charges he faced which involved indecent still images of children, a lengthy probation order coupled with a treatment programme may have been possible.

But Tyler had also been found with indecent video footage, which led to a total of 16 charges of making indecent photographs of children. Judge Nash said: “Having seen him give his evidence, I don’t think I have ever seen somebody so arrogant and self-possessed.”

Judge Nash said the sort of approach he had spoken of was only suitable when the person was humble and acknowledged their weaknesses, "as your client did in his first three interviews [with police] when this jury have no doubt rightly found he effectively admitted these offences.”

The court heard police with a search warrant went to Tyler’s home at 7am on November 6, 2002 and removed two computers, both of which contained indecent material.

File names such as ‘Kiddie Wow’, ‘Child Lover’ and ‘Kiddie Underage Illegal’ were found giving a flavour of what had been downloaded previously.

A number of searches had been made via Google using keywords such as porn rape, rape sex girls, rape young girls, girls sex, child sex, paedophile pornography and paedophilia.

Tyler said much of what he downloaded came via a share programme called Kazaa and when he realised his compulsion had got him into trouble, he began seeing a therapist.

Tyler was working as an educational consultant and school inspector when arrested.

He installed Kazaa because he wanted to download music for his wife’s birthday. By the time he was arrested he was accessing the Internet every day for emailing, visiting official websites such as Offsted and the Department of Education and was invariably downloading a programme while he was working.

He said was downloading compulsively from any site ranging from an oil company, to travel and pornograpy showing young women involved in sex acts.

Although agreeing that some material accessed via Kazaa included indecent pictures of children, he did not consciously download such images and he never searched the web for them.

Although he couldn’t recall what words he put into Google to search the Internet he accepted he may have used terms like ‘teens’ and ‘underage’. He believed ‘underage’ meant under 21, most porn coming from America where the age of consent was 21.

Tyler said he never saw the 10 stills images subject of the charges before his arrest nor had he seen the video files. “I don’t remember clicking on any of these six movies files to download them,” he said.

“I would later return to the Kazaa files that had been downloaded and sometimes just delete the files because I didn’t want what was there. I downloaded them because I felt uncomfortable if things were not downloading.

“Over a time I downloaded more and more material of all sorts from the Internet. By the time I was arrested I was compulsively downloading. I felt uncomfortable when I wasn’t.

“Sometimes I would highlight things and make use of Windows Explorer to put them in a folder called Willow Chase. Sometimes I looked at some of them, but in general I deleted them,” said Tyler.

He told the police he was undergoing therapy because of his compulsive downloading. He realised he had problem which had ultimately cost him his 30-year-career.

“I was not having therapy for compulsively downloading child pornography,” he said. “If I saw it was child porn, I deleted it,” he said. He didn’t save it. He would also delete a file if the name suggested child porn.

Tyler said he knew he was running a risk by his downloading and it was foolish to carry on. If he had seen suggestive titles, he would not have downloaded. “The fact had come home to me that my downloading had landed me in considerable trouble and this was why I went to a therapist. It was my responsibility.

“I recognised a large proportion of what I was downloading was pornography and part of this was illegal stuff because the police found it on my computer. It was probably downloaded via Kazaa because of my compulsive behaviour.

“It was not because of a compulsion for child pornography. I have no interest in it and I am not really interested in pornography. It was the downloading that was the issue.

“I was horrified when I saw some of the material and agree with the description ‘filth’.

“I told the police I didn’t get a sexual thrill from it. It just felt odd if I wasn’t doing it.”

Cross-examined by Edmund Fowler, prosecuting, Tyler agreed he would spend long periods on the internet but disagreed he had an email address just for pornography. He did not shift the porn into a special folder to look at later. “Sometimes I would look at the file but this didn’t necessarily mean I would look at the image. Some files I deleted without looking at them.”

He denied keeping some of the videos for a while to look at. An example of something he would download was the BP report to shareholders which he would then delete.

It was put to him he had entered ‘free pree teens’ to search but Tyler couldn’t recall it but did accept it would mean under thirteens. He denied targeting certain porn sites.