COVENTRY MESSAGE BOARD

Frank Swales refused to take his hand out of his pocket when police arrived as he desperately tried to hide the stick



A teacher tried to flush a USB stick containing indecent images of children down the toilet when police raided his house, a court heard.

Frank Swales rushed to the bathroom but was involved in a violent struggle with officers before they managed to force his hand open to get the memory stick from him, a judge has heard.

Swales, 59, of Southam Crescent, Lighthorne Heath, near Gaydon, pleaded guilty at Warwick Crown Court in November to three charges of making indecent images of children between January 2009 and March last year.

But the Warwickshire College teacher, who has since been dismissed, entered his plea on the basis that his downloading had been “almost inadvertent”.

That was rejected by the prosecutor who pointed out that Swales had used a file-sharing programme to download material and had then filtered out the indecent images of children and moved them to a USB stick before erasing them from his computer.

And at the resumed hearing on Wednesday, the judge was told Swales wished to retract his assertion it had been inadvertent.

Swales was given a three-year community sentence and ordered to take part in a three-year sex offender’s programme and a rehabilitation activity for 40 days, and was also ordered to register as a sex offender for five years.

Prosecutor Kate Fortescue said that in March last year Swales was at his home when the police turned up as part of Operation Safe Net.

“The defendant and his two children were there, and when the officers entered, they became aware of movement upstairs and saw him heading towards the bathroom.

“They believed he was going to try to dispose of something by discarding it down the toilet, and that was the case. They told him to move back from the bathroom to his bedroom.”

Swales was then involved in a struggle with the officers as he repeatedly refused to take his hand out of his pocket, and the officers had to force his hand open during a violent struggle.

They retrieved a USB stick from his hand, and on it they later found more than 300 indecent images of children.

There were 31 movies classed as being in category A, showing young girls being subjected to sex acts by adults.

There were six category B movies and 196 movies and 86 stills in category C, showing children in naked or indecent poses.

A further 77 category C images were found on Swales’s laptop and notebook computers, said Miss Fortescue.

Swales had been remanded in custody after failing to turn up for a previous hearing, and when an unsuccessful application for bail was made, to allow him to arrange his mother’s funeral, it was said he could live at an address in Milverton Terrace, Leamington.

And Graeme Simpson, defending, who pointed out that the funeral is due to take place on February 6, said: “He knows he can’t go back to the family home before his wife agrees.”