A FORMER primary school teacher has been jailed after admitting possessing hundreds of indecent images and movies of children.

Ryan Kusminoff, who taught year two children at Kingsleigh Primary School in Bournemouth until April last year, was sentenced after admitting 11 articles of possessing indecent images of children and four counts of possessing extreme pornographic images.

He is the second teacher to have been employed at the school to be jailed for possession of indecent images in the space of two years.

Prosecutor Simon Jones told Dorchester Crown Court that police officers executed a warrant at the defendant’s home address in Poole last April after concerns were raised over material downloaded through the IP address registered with the property.

Mr Jones said: “They showed the defendant a warrant and introduced themselves to him.

“The defendant raised his hands and said ‘I know what you are talking about’.”

He said officers seized three computers and forensic analysis of the devices revealed ‘key word searches’ had been carried out to ‘assist in the downloading of indecent images of children'.

The analysis uncovered more than 800 indecent movies and images of children, which were graded according to their seriousness.

Mr Jones said that the movies involved 275 that fell in to the most serious category A, with 220 in category B and 96 in category C.

In terms of the images, there were 10 category A, 14 category B and 323 category C.

Mr Jones said that some of the children in question in the images and movies were as young as three or four years old.

The searches also revealed 75 extreme pornographic movies involving animals and a further 1,062 images.

Stewart Patterson, mitigating, said 32-year-old Kusminoff was a man of ‘impeccable good character’ who had otherwise led an exemplary life.

He said that during the court process his client had been seeking help for what he recognised was a problem he needed assistance with.

Mr Patterson added that there was no suggestion whatsoever that Kusminoff had ever acted improperly towards children during his time as a teacher.

He said: “There has not been the slightest hint if contact of any exempt conduct in relation to those children.”

Judge Douglas Field told Kusminoff: “We are dealing with a considerable amount of material.

“The material that you were watching is appalling, involving the terrible abuse of these young children.”

Kusminoff was sentenced to 10 months in prison for each of the offences, which will run concurrently.

He will also be placed on the sexual offenders’ register for a period of 10 years and was made subject to a sexual harm prevention order that will run for the same period.

In July 2013 Simon Clannachan, a former teacher at the same West Howe school, was sentenced to six months in prison after the he pleaded guilty to 21 counts of possessing indecent images and extreme pornographic images involving animals.

Following Kusminoff's sentencing, Kingsleigh head teacher Richard Gower said: “Our school is satisfied that the sentence passed by the court is appropriate and just in this case. This brings closure of the matter and allows everyone in our school community to continue to move on. We have much to be proud of at Kingsleigh and continue to look forward to the future.”