A former teacher at Peponi House School has been sentenced to three and a half years for child sexual abuse in the United Kingdom.
Peter Toner worked at Peponi between 2000 and 2013 as a Science teacher before his conviction last week for crimes committed back in the 1980s while working at St John Beaumont School.
The school management is said to have sent apology letters to parents and guardians of 370 pupils aged between 9 and 13, for not having carefully scrutinized him.
“We have recently been informed that Mr Peter Toner (who was a teacher at this school between 2000 and 2013) has been convicted of offences committed at another preparatory school in the UK in the 1980s, following his arrest in 2015,” the head teacher, Robert Blake said in an email to the parents.
He further assures the parents that a proper background check was conducted before the school employed the pedophile.
“We are appalled by the events of the past and it is saddening to see many cases across the world of historic child abuse, especially when those took place in schools. There is no place in society for abuse, particularly by those in positions of power. We admire the courage of those who came forward to report it,” the Peponi School head teacher says.
Toner was arrested in 2005 while returning to the UK. On him was a USB stick that had 16 videos of child sex and seven images. There were also 123 videos of children sex and animals, 26 other images of kids posing naked, detectives revealed.
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During his sentencing, Justice Anuja Dhir noted that the sex pest abused the trust parents, children and the school had in him.
“All of those counts had one feature in common, they showed you are a man who had and still has a perverted sexual interest in young boys, boys aged between the ages of nine and 12,” Justice Dhir said.
Two witnesses in the case, now aged 38 and 39 said that their former teacher lured them to his bedroom before asking them to striptease as he recorded them on camera. On a separate occasion, Toner is said to have taught one of the boys how to masturbate as he sat on his lap.
The court also heard that the former teacher used a ruler to measure his victims’ genitals.
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