A former Harrogate headteacher repeatedly denied in court making more than 3,000 indecent images of children.

Matthew Shillito, 42, pleaded not guilty to making 20 Category B images and 3,829 Category C images between December 3, 2012 and December 31, 2015.

Mr Shillito 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.

During the case, "making" was defined as knowingly accessing a site that contained an indecent image.

The court was told that there was no evidence that Mr Shillito downloaded the alleged material onto his laptop.

The prosecution opened proceedings at Harrogate Magistrates Court yesterday and said the alleged 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.

Philip Morris, prosecuting, said there were “indicative” terms found on Mr Shillito’s laptop which showed intent to access the alleged images.

Searches were 'legitimate'

However, Kevin Blount, defence, told the court that while the terms found on the computers may have been indicative, they were “not conclusive” as they could also bring up legitimate results.

Mr Blount said that a Russian image website named in court, which was accessed on Mr Shillito's Dell laptop, contained legitimate images, such as travel pictures, as well as illegal ones.

He added that cached images could have been stored on the laptop from parts of a web page which Mr Shillito did not look at.

Addressing the search terms found on the laptop, Mr Blount said that the terms could bring up “legitimate images”.

He pointed to terms such as “Nabokov Lolita”, which he said could have been a legitimate search for the 1955 novel by Vladimir Nabokov.

He said:

Cross examination

During cross examination of Mr Shillito, Mr Blount asked him whether he had visited the named Russian site.

Mr Shillito said:

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Mr Shillito told the court that he used the site to look for images he was interested in, such as travel after visiting Croatia in 2011. He said he had also used it for teaching material.

He told the court that while the website was Russian, it was loaded in English and was recommended by technology companies such as Apple as a site to use.

When asked by District Judge Lower if he had seen any indecent images of children, Mr Shillito replied “no”.

He repeatedly denied under cross examination that he had made the alleged indecent images of children.

Summaries of four police interviews with Mr Shillito were also read out in court where he denied the allegations.

iPad disposed

Prosecutor Morris asked Mr Shillito about an iPad mini, which was not recovered by police but a backup was found on a silver MacBook Pro.

Mr Shillito confirmed that he had disposed of the iPad because it was “not updating” and had a crack down the screen. He added that he threw it out during a clear out of his address.

Mr Morris put it to Mr Shillito that he had thrown the iPad out two days before police arrived to arrest him because “he was rumbled”. He denied this and said he was he was not aware that police were coming to his address.

When asked about the number of times he visited pages which were “indicative” of the alleged indecent images, Mr Shillito said he “could not imagine” visiting some of them.

Mr Morris told the court that it was “not just one” occasion that the defendant visited the site.

He said: