Ex-teacher charged with spying on pupils with hidden cameras

A former teacher at a top Bristol public school has been charged with spying on pupils with hidden cameras for 16 years.

Jonathan Thomson-Glover, 53, is accused of installing cameras in various locations around prestigious Clifton College, where he taught German for more than 30 years, and at one other address.

He faces 36 counts of making, taking and possessing indecent images of children. They relate to between 120 and 160 alleged victims, who were between 12 and 17 at the time of filming, and span a 16-year period.

Police said there was no evidence the alleged crimes involved any other teachers at the college, or involved touching pupils.

Thomson-Glover, of Wadebridge, Cornwall, is out on bail and due to appear before Taunton Magistrates Court in Somerset on July 20.

He was arrested in August last year following a joint operation by Avon and Somerset Police and Devon and Cornwall Police, resigning from his teaching position with immediate effect.

Thomson-Glover was a pupil at Clifton College himself between 1968 and 1980. He was also head of the school's East Town accommodation house, an all-boys house for day students, that prides itself on its "warm, inviting and sociable atmosphere".

Clifton College is a co-educational independent school founded in 1862 and has around 720 pupils, a third of them girls. Students are taught in mixed classes but are also placed in single-sex houses where the school says they receive "first class pastoral care".

Famous former Clifton College students include John Cleese and First World War military leader Field Marshal Douglas Haig.

In a statement the school said they had been "shocked" by the allegations, and were "cooperating fully with the police".