A school bus driver caught playing with himself on a coach was found to have thousands of indecent images of children.
Frederick McBride was meant to be picking up Alsop High School pupils from Walton Sports Centre on Tuesday, September 16, 2014.
But a gym user spotted the 59-year-old pleasuring himself on the empty vehicle in the car park at around 10.30am.
Liverpool Crown Court heard police then raided his home and discovered 9,490 child sex abuse photographs and videos.
Chris Taylor, prosecuting, said McBride, of Merton Road, Bootle was working for Maghull Coaches and was set to collect boys and girls aged eight to 13, who were playing football.
A man who was using an exercise bike looked towards the car park and saw McBride standing in the middle of the coach.
He reported the incident to staff, who could also see McBride playing with himself.
Mr Taylor said: “He was challenged and told he could be seen from the gym area.
“He said ‘I didn’t know, I was only masturbating over my bird’.”
The Walton school was informed and police were contacted before the bus pulled away from the car park.
Officers tracked McBride down and arrested him at around 2.30pm. He confirmed he was the driver.
Police recovered a laptop and external hard drive from his home which contained 849 Category A – the most serious category – plus 909 Category B and 7,732 Category C indecent photographs and videos.
McBride made no comment when first interviewed by police, but later confessed, saying he was sexually attracted to young girls.
He has no previous convictions, but was previously investigated after girls made allegations against him in 2002.
Mr Taylor said no charges were brought in relation to these matters, adding that Maghull Coaches were aware of the allegations “but continued to place trust in him”.
He said McBride claimed he downloaded the images after that investigation ended “as a form of revenge against those girls who had made those initial allegations”.
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McBride admitted outraging public decency and four counts of downloading incident photographs of children.
Katy Appleton, defending, said her client was seeking help from a psychologist and his doctor.
She said: “He is somebody who desperately needs help. He deeply wants to try and understand his offending behaviour.”
Ms Appleton said McBride was a low risk of re-offending and urged the judge to follow probation staff’s recommendation to give him help to address his problems.
Judge Neil Flewitt, QC, said McBride breached the trust placed in him by Maghull Coaches and downloaded the images over many years.
He said: “It’s no coincidence in my judgement that for the most part the images were of young female children aged between eight and 10.
“There were such children among the group of those you were waiting to collect. It’s clear you have an unhealthy sexual interest in girls of that age.”
Judge Flewitt handed him 12 months in prison, suspended for two years, plus two year’s supervision and 80 hours of unpaid work.
He ordered McBride to attend an internet sex offender group programme and to sign on the Sex Offenders Register for 10 years, while subject to a Sexual Harm Prevention Order.
Source: http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/