A former Harrogate headteacher repeatedly visited a website which was “indicative” of alleged indecent images of children, a court heard today.
Matthew Shillito, 42, denies making 20 Category B images and 3,829 Category C images between December 3, 2012 and December 31, 2015.
Mr Shillito, of Gordon Avenue, Harrogate, was appointed headteacher of Western Primary School in 2019.
He was previously headteacher across the Goldsborough Sicklinghall Federation of schools.
None of the alleged offences related to his employment.
Mr Shillito appeared for trial at Harrogate Magistrates Court today.
Philip Morris, prosecuting, told the court that the indecent images were found on the cache in Mr Shillito’s computer, which could have only have got there had he accessed sites with those images.
He said:
“It is the prosecution’s case that those images found as they were on the computer cache were present as a result of the user of the computer accessing indicative content on the internet.”
Police seize computers
Police arrested Mr Shillito and seized two computers at his address on January 4, 2020.
Officers recovered a Dell laptop and a MacBook Pro, which contained a back up from an iPad mini which was not found.
Giving evidence to the court, Zoe Warboys, a digital forensic investigation officer at North Yorkshire Police, said that while the defendant may not have been aware of the cache, he could have only got them by accessing the material.
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A Russian website named in court was frequently accessed on the Dell laptop, which Ms Warboys told the court was a site which contained indecent images of children.
The site is public and allows users to upload albums of images which others can view.
The court heard how the site was frequently visited on February 26, 2011.
Mr Morris told the court that Shillito visited some of the pages which were “indicative” of possibly including indecent images 30 times.
Meanwhile the defendant’s MacBook contained a backup from an iPad mini, which the court heard was not recovered by police during the raid.
Mr Morris said the backup included search terms which were “indicative” of indecent images of children.
A number of Google search terms were also presented to the court, which the prosecution argued demonstrated an intent from the defendant to access the alleged images.
Denies allegations
There was no evidence that Mr Shillito downloaded the alleged images onto his desktop, the court heard.
Mr Shillito repeatedly denied to the court that he had knowingly accessed indecent images of children.
Kevin Blount, defence, said that while the terms found on the computers may have been indicative, they were “not conclusive” as they could also bring up legitimate results.
The court heard how Mr Shillito had also repeatedly denied accessing the alleged images during police interview.
The trial continues.
