Harrow Chronicle: David Taylor pleaded guilty to four counts of making indecent images of children.

A teacher who said he downloaded child abuse images to expose "legal" porn websites in a book he was writing has been banned from the profession. David Taylor, 58, was employed at St Patrick’s Catholic Primary School in Walthamstow when he downloaded the images in 2020. Mr Taylor was suspended from the school in June 2020 after he was arrested by Essex Police. He later pleaded guilty to four counts of making indecent images of children and was sentenced to a community order in February last year. Last month, a Teaching Regulation Agency (TRA) conduct panel was told that Mr Taylor is “bitter and angry” at the justice system, stating he only pleaded guilty because he had no other option. Mr Taylor claimed he had downloaded the images from “legal” sites to “expose” the owners of the websites. He said he is a staunch supporter of children’s rights and when he saw the government were not taking down the images he “lost the plot”. The teacher said he planned to confront the owners of the websites with the images for a book he was writing. At court, a judge told him: “Whatever the motivation, your behaviour is still of real concern. “It is clear from all of the information that has been uploaded on your behalf, you have become obsessive and you have appointed yourself as a guardian to children, but you are not a child protection officer, you are not an academic researcher, you are not a police officer, and in fact you probably are not helping. “The very fact that in downloading images a market is created, whatever the motivation of the person who downloads them. “The very fact that those images are downloaded creates the market and that is a stark example, isn’t it, of whatever your motivations, your actual actions defeated the purpose, and your actual actions cause harm, which is why, if I can just say this, Mr Taylor, you would be well advised to just step away. “Try and step away from this as much as you can. It is not helping you. It is not helping anybody else.” READ MORE Some of the best secret London playgrounds parents love without the crowds FIRST UK professional Padel tournament set for London this summer London Underground's shortest tube line with just two stations A TRA panel said Mr Taylor was trained in safeguarding and ought to have known the risks that the research for his book exposed him to. Mr Taylor admitted he had made a serious error of judgment and said, “I will regret to my dying day, but at the time I felt it was valid”. The panel said that he lacked insight into the impact his behaviour had and concluded that he should be prohibited from teaching in England indefinitely.