Paedophile ran teaching website

January 16, 2010 by Infowars Ireland

By Hannah Richardson
news.bbc.co.uk

A convicted paedophile and former teacher was free to run a major UK education website, the BBC has learned.

Samuel Kinge, 28, from Evesham, was last week jailed for a second time for downloading abusive images of children.

Samuel Kinge changed his name by deed poll from Daniel

He had been running the Sparklebox teaching and parenting resource website used in thousands of schools.

This was blocked in some areas after internet safety officials discovered who was running it and that there had been some “worrying interactivity”.

The case comes just weeks after the government slightly relaxed incoming rules on how people who work or volunteer in schools are vetted.

It appears to expose a potential loophole in how paedophiles could potentially access young children through technology.

Internet safety officials have told the BBC they became concerned after a blog and pictures of children also started appearing on the website, which offers colourful teaching materials such as numeracy posters for teachers and children’s bedroom posters for parents.

It led officials responsible for ensuring the safety of internet technology in schools in south-west England to block the site.

E-safety officer at the South West Grid for Learning Trust David Wright said: “We were first alerted to the problem in the summer of 2009 when our filtering and monitoring system disclosed to us that there were potential concerns with the website Sparklebox.

“There were areas where pictures of children were being published and up until recently there was an active blog.

“The concerns were about the interactive technology on the site and the previous conviction of the owner.”

Kinge, who was known as Daniel Kinge before changing his name by deed poll, had been jailed for nine months in 2005 for downloading images of children being abused from the internet while working at a Warwickshire school.

Once the officials had taken the decision to block schools’ access to Sparklebox they alerted the 11 other regional Grids for Learning across the UK. Read more…