A FORMER prison education manager has been jailed for 18 months for downloading thousands of child porn images and secretly filming a young girl.

William Winspear was told by a judge he had no doubt he would be treated as a pariah when he returned to the community.

The 49-year-old father had worked at Maidstone Prison and served in the Army for more than 27 years, reaching the rank of Staff Sergeant.

Maidstone Crown Court heard he was of good character until police discovered his depraved secret.

Tanya Robinson, prosecuting, said Winspear, of Trewin Close, Aylesford, near Maidstone, was identified as having accessed a website containing film of a child, aged about four, being raped by men.

When officers raided his home at 6am on June 8 last year, he was looking at indecent material on one of two computers.

Miss Robinson said Winspear’s wife asked him if anything would be found on the computers and he replied: “Yes.”

He added: “I never touched anyone. I only looked at pictures.”

Police seized hard drives from the computers and a digital camera. He described the images as “just something you look at, and then you want to see more of”.

Miss Robinson said Winspear had covertly filmed a young girl playing, concentrating on the lower part of her body.

Winspear admitted 33 charges of making indecent photographs of a child and one of taking an indecent photograph of a child.

The total amount of images was 7,700, 100 of which were at the highest level of five and 680 were level four.

Judge Philip Statman said: “Each one of those images depicts a child who is being abused in the most foul way.”

Winspear was banned from working with children and will remain on the sex offenders’ register for 10 years.

Tana Adkin, defending, said Winspear was typical of hard-working, respectable men who committed the offences.

“It is a disease which is being spread through the internet,” she said. “He need not have viewed them and had them stored on his computer.”

Winspear, who had been in custody since October, served in the Royal Engineers and saw action in Northern Ireland and the Falklands, where he witnessed traumatic scenes.

He had worked as an education manager at Maidstone Prison, conducting computer training.

“He looked at this material when his marriage was breaking down,” said Miss Adkin. “His parents died within an hour of each other.

“There was some form of depression. I don’t put that forward as an excuse. He describes almost an addiction to the material.”

Miss Adkin added that Winspear would not return to his old address, but intended to live with his son.