A COLLEGE teacher who had thousands of indecent images of children stored on his computer has not been banned from working with children.

David Killinger, 61, who is currently suspended from his role at Swindon College, had filed and stored more than 5,000 illicit pictures on his computer.

But Judge Euan Ambrose said he had decided not to ban Killinger from working with children as “that seems to me is a matter which is inappropriate for me to resolve”.

Instead he told Swindon Crown Court it should be down to the college, saying he was not going to pre-empt its disciplinary hearing.

Lynne Henderson, prosecuting, told the court the police were called in at the start of last year when Killinger’s wife became suspicious of his computer use.

She found he was being furtive when using the machine and she had compiled pages of websites she found he had been looking at.

When officers spoke to him he told them they would find nothing on the computer but after examining it they found the hoard of indecent images.

As well as the 5,135 pictures and one movie of girls on the cusp of puberty they also found more than 7,000 other pictures of children which fell short of being illegal.

Miss Henderson said at the time of his arrest in February last year he had just retired from his full time role at the college and was working part time.

Killinger was later to say that he had been looking for pictures of a girl on the net who he said looked like his wife when they met.

As a result he obtained pictures of the girl when she was underage as well as other images of young girls.

He said he had put some of them into files to make it easier to delete them but had failed to get rid of some as his wife had come into his office as he was doing it.

Killinger, of Stanton St Quintin, pleaded guilty to six counts of making indecent images of children and one of possession.

Rachel Drake, defending, said her client had been looking for images of the girl who looked like his wife when she was 17 or 18.

Although there were a large amount of pictures she said many were in thumbnail form and it was not uncommon for cases where there were tens of thousands.

She said Killinger worked at the college teaching people with learning difficulties from the age of 16 through to pupils in their forties.

There had never been a suggestion that he had been a risk to young people having worked in the college environment, she said.

At the time of the offending she said he was at a low ebb in his marriage and had been prescribed antidepressants which he had not taken. He was now reconciled with his wife.

Passing sentence the judge said: “The photographs are of children in sexually provocative poses. You have pleaded to seven counts.

“In each the girl is on the cusp of puberty in a provocative and suggestive pose and wearing provocative and suggestive clothing.

“They are the tip of a much larger iceberg in that on your computer there were 5,000 similar images and indeed a great many more that fell short of a classification for an indecent image.”

He added that there was a ‘degree of minimisation that comes across quite clearly from the pre-sentence report’.

He imposed a three-year community order and told him to attend a sex offenders’ programme, pay £300 costs and register as a sex offender for five years.

Amanda Burnside, director at Swindon College, said: “The college suspended David Killinger as soon as we learnt of the charges against him.

“In the light of the guilty plea we will, of course, be reviewing his future employment with us.”