July 2004

Ex-head caged for porn

A former primary school headteacher from Thames Ditton has been jailed for six months after police discovered almost 4,000 indecent images of children at his home.

Timothy Callaway, 43, a former deputy head at the Royal Kent School in Oxshott, has also been placed on the sex offenders register for seven years after he admitted downloading pornographic images of children from the internet.

He resigned from his role as headteacher of a school in Streatham last year to become a freelance education consultant in Surrey and Kingston.

But in April police swooped on his home and seized a computer, lap top and a stock of discs. It followed a tip-off by a US task force set up in 2003 to investigate child abuse on the internet.

At Guildford Magistrates’ Court on Friday, when he was sentenced, it was revealed the former choirmaster had turned around struggling St Leonards C of E School in Streatham where he was headteacher from 1995.

But Annabel Privett, defending, told the court that the good reputation he had built up in that role had been lost since his arrest.

She said: “He had everything. He had respect and standing in the community and has lost all that and perhaps wants to make a new life for himself where he is not known for these offences.

“He has lost his career, his business that he started and potentially has lost his family. His reputation both with colleagues and members of the church is lost.

“He is a man who has gone from being a headteacher to being on benefits. He has lost his dignity.”

Callaway trained as a teacher at Kingston University when he was in his early 20s.

He taught in schools in Streatham, Islington and Sunbury until 1990, when he became deputy head of the Royal Kent School in Oakshade Road, until 1995.

Miss Privett said he had achieved a considerable amount during his career and listed a string of credits which St Leonards had gained under his headship.

They included improved Ofsted reports and better exam results.

She told the court how when police had visited Callaway’s Thames Ditton home to seize computer equipment, he handed them computer CDs and said: “Is this what you are looking for?”

She said Callaway admitted he had a problem and had started a rehabilitation course.

She said: “Mr Callaway was a man who prior to these events recognised a crisis in his life and recognised that he needed to get help, that it needed to stop.”

He enrolled on a course of therapy, the court heard, which involved him taking part in deep self-analysis.

Announcing the sentence, chairman of the bench Mrs Dunne referred to the large number of images found in Callaway’s possession and the “degree of control in organising the images”.