Teacher filmed 130 pupils in showers

Generic pic of blackboard and chalk

Generic pic of blackboard and chalk

Published Aug 28, 2015

Share

London - To his admirers, Jonathan Thomson-Glover was a real-life “Mr Chips” – a teacher who devoted his life to pupils at a prestigious public school.

Parents regarded him as a “consummate professional”, while to pupils he was a “friend” who allowed them to smoke, drink and have sex on school premises.

But in reality he was a pervert who for 16 years recorded the most intimate moments of children in his charge using secret cameras for his own sexual gratification.

A court heard on Thursday how the housemaster used the holidays to fix cameras into the walls – linking them to video recorders back in his private quarters at £33 000-a-year Clifton College in Bristol.

Other recordings were made on a camcorder placed inside a bag with a hole cut in it and carried around a shower room, Taunton Crown Court was told. In total, detectives found 2 500 hours of video footage on 330 tapes and included images of at least 130 pupils, both boys and girls.

The German teacher also downloaded thousands of indecent images of children from the internet.

On Thursday Thomson-Glover, 53, was jailed for three years and nine months after admitting 36 offences of taking, making and possessing indecent images of children.

Passing sentence, Judge David Ticehurst told him his life was “reduced to rubble” because of his “fatal flaw”.

“You are the author of your own misfortune and there can be little sympathy for you,” he added.

The son of the college’s vicar, Thomson-Glover joined the school as a pupil aged six and returned as a teacher in 1990.

He was highly regarded by parents, one of whom compared him to the character from the book Goodbye Mr Chips, about a beloved boarding school teacher.

“He was absolutely charming. He was Mr Chips, he lived and breathed the college,” said the parent.

Prosecutor Howard Phillips said: “To parents and other adults he came across as the perfect housemaster, professional and caring, an excellent teacher who went the extra mile for his pupils.”

But his image was shattered when the National Crime Agency discovered his computer was being used to download inappropriate images and police found he had set up cameras in ten locations at his quarters and a flat he owned in Cornwall.

Phillips said he had used his position to “film the pupils under his care in states of undress and committing sexual acts”.

Most footage was shot in his bathroom in Cornwall, along with bedrooms, study rooms and showers at a school house for day pupils. The court heard the teacher made his bedroom “available to male and female students for sexual intercourse”.

Thomson-Glover was arrested in August last year and told police the filming was “addictive” and fuelled by the internet. For many years he took pupils on trips to Cornwall, but one former pupil recalled how the breaks involved “running naked across the golf course and smoking cannabis”.

Phillips said when pupils and their families were told the “overwhelming sentiment was a feeling of betrayal” by a man they had “looked up to, respected and befriended”.

Andrew Langdon QC, defending, said his client apologised “for his litany of wrongs”.

A statement by one female victim read in court said she now realised the teacher had filmed her with her first boyfriend.

She said: “He wanted to film us doing these intimate things that you would hope no one else – particularly someone you trusted and looked up to - was watching.”

A parent said their son’s innocence had been “violated”.

Clifton College, founded in 1862, is one of the UK’s top independent schools and former pupils include John Cleese and TV sports host John Inverdale.

Daily Mail

Related Topics: