A French teacher has been jailed after posing as a boy online to entice teenage girls to send him sexual images. Simon Clark, 46, head of department at the Alun High School in Mold, North Wales, admitted preying on 26 youngsters, aged between 10 and 15.
Chester Crown Court heard the father of two, whose wife has since divorced him and his career ended, has “lost everything” and on Friday morning kept his head bowed as he was jailed. Passing sentence, Judge Simon Berkson told the former teacher he represented a “significant risk” to children.
Judge Berkson said: “It is, of course, every parent’s worst nightmare, this sort of thing happening to their children.
“Many of the offences involve sexual communication, some involving inciting children to engage in sexual activity. This was well planned and sophisticated criminal behaviour.
“You clearly have a sexual interest from the sexual abuse of children and gain sexual gratification from it.”
Prosecutor John Philpotts told the court Clark’s activities were only discovered by chance by one mother, “looking over the shoulder” of one girl.
On January 24, 2023, the mother called police after discovering her 12-year-old daughter had received sexually explicit messages on Snapchat from the ‘Jamie Jones’ account.
The mother only found out as her daughter had been “grounded” for a separate matter and had her phone confiscated so was using a laptop her mother had access to.
Clark pretended to be a 14-year-old boy using a fake Snapchat profile with the name “Jamie_jones6968” to send hundreds of explicit messages to the girl, persuading some to send sexual images in return.
Initial enquiries suggested that the suspect was living in the Cheshire area, so the case was passed to Cheshire Police.
An investigation was subsequently launched by detectives from their Online Child Abuse Investigation Team (OCAIT), and officers established that working teacher Clark was the suspect in the case.
A warrant was conducted at his home in May 2023 and a number of devices were seized from the address. He was arrested at his school.
During subsequent analysis officers discovered that Clark had been posing as a teenager using a snapchat account under the name ‘Jamie_jones6968’.
Within the account detectives recovered hundreds of messages to a large number of girls, at least 30 of whom were under the age of 16.
Many of the messages were of a sexualised nature, with Clark regularly requesting for the girls to share indecent images of themselves.
In addition, officers also recovered more than 100 category A, B and C indecent images of children from Clark’s devices.
Jeremy Rawson, mitigating for Clark, said his wife had divorced him and he only has limited contact with his children and other family had disowned him.
Mr Rawson added: “He is a man who is educated, a teacher, a professional, worked in the education system for 20 years, all of that is lost.
“He has lost everything as a result of what he has done. There is a black side to his character.
“There are no winners in this case whatsoever.”
Clark, formerly of Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, admitted 29 offences; one count of inciting a child under 13 to engage in penetrative sexual activity, two counts of inciting a child under 13 to engage in non-penetrative sexual activity, two counts of inciting a child under 16 to engage in non-penetrative sexual activity, 21 counts of engaging in sexual communication with a child under 16, one count of making 26 indecent images of children of Category A, one of making 29 indecent images of children of Category B and one of making 81 indecent images of children of Category C.
Following his guilty plea, Detective Constable Louise Murphy and Detective Constable Megan Griffiths of Cheshire Police, who led the investigation, said: “Firstly, we would like to praise the victims in this case for the bravery and courage that they have shown throughout this investigation.
“Clark was a teacher, he held a position of trust, and the messages we recovered clearly showed that he was well aware that his victims were all under the age of 16, but despite this he continued his crimes in order to satisfy his own warped sexual desires.
“It was apparent throughout the investigation that Clark is a sexual predator who preyed on young girls, with no regard for the effects his actions would have on the victims or their families.
“While they will never be able to forget what he did, we hope the fact that he has admitted his crimes will provide them with some closure.”
