Former Acting Head of Jersey primary school has 11 months added to jail sentence

The former Acting Head of a Jersey primary school has had 11 months added to his jail sentence

James John Matthews (43) has been sentenced to another 11 months in prison after police discovered 172 additional indecent images of children on two further devices.

Matthews was first sentenced to two years and nine months in prison back in September 2020 for making 33 indecent images of children and sending messages of an indecent nature.

Two days prior to sentencing Matthews' now ex-wife found a further two devices in the family home when she was clearing out a room, which she handed over to the Police. It was on those devices that a further 172 images of children were found when sent to England for forensic investigation. 86 of them were in the most serious category, category A.

Matthews was also charged with the distribution of five category A images and one Category C image of children to three email addresses between 6th November 2014 and 7th January 2015. He pleaded guilty to all additional charges in July this year.

The prosecution asked for 21 months to be added to the initial sentence. The defence argued that would have been punishing him for the failures of the police and prosecution. in retrieving those additional devices in a thorough search when he was first arrested. Had they been, it would have enabled the additional charges to be brought at the time.

Instead, Advocate David Steenson argued, both Matthews and more importantly his family have had to face all the facts of this case all over again.

In passing sentence, Deputy Bailiff Robert McRae said the additional charges had changed the picture the court was faced with last year. The were no longer dealing with a 'small number' of images, nor were they for Matthews' purposes only.

Whilst he had told police when faced with the additional charges that he had forgotten about the other two devices, the court did not accept that. A higher percentage of the total number of images, were now also in the most serious category.

The additional sentence brings the total sentence to three years and eight months.