Alex Trelinski
SPAIN’S Supreme Court has upheld a 135-year prison sentence for a British teacher and nanny who created and distributed pornography of children in his care after changing his name following previous convictions in the UK.
Ben David Rose was handed the jail term last year after being found guilty of producing child pornography involving 36 children aged between four and eight years old after lying his way into one of Madrid’s most prestigious private schools.
The case raised serious safeguarding concerns after it emerged he had been convicted for similar crimes in the UK and placed on the sex offenders register before moving to Spain where he found work as an au pair and then as an English teacher in several schools in the capital.
The 33-year-old had in 2016 been convicted of sex crimes against children while running a summer camp in the St. Albans area where he used his original name of Ben David Lewis.
In an investigation carried out by the Olive Press, it emerged that within days of being handed a suspended sentence and placed on the sex offenders list he changed his name by deed poll to from Ben David Lewis to Ben David Rose.
He applied for a new passport and fled to Spain where he quickly found work as a nanny in Zaragoza looking after three children.
Rose then moved to Madrid and cared for two young children before taking a job as an English teacher at a private school.
Police were tipped off to the presence of a ‘dangerous sexual predator’ working in Madrid schools after an investigation by police in Australia into the online sexual exploitation of children identified that someone in the capital was making and distributing obscene images.
When police later searched his phone, they found dozens of obscene photos and videos of him with girls as young as six years inside a classroom.
Rose also was convicted of photographing three children under 10 years old naked or in their underwear and distributing the images on the dark web from his time working in Zaragoza.
The Supreme Court on Friday upheld Rose’s conviction and sentence in a lower court on child pornography offences, dozens of offences linked to disclosure of secrets, and a single conviction for a ‘crime against moral integrity’.
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