When people talk of being caught red-handed, they might not be thinking of a 35 deputy head teacher who was actively negotiating with a teenager in India for the supply of sexual images of a younger child when officers from the UK's National Crime Agency, with support from the Metropolitan Police burst into his home. And they are almost certainly not thinking that he would have open, on his computer, several "dark web" websites dedicated to child sexual abuse material.

"Investigators interrogated chat logs and financial transactions and were able to establish that Smith had paid that same teenager, and another also based in India, a total of GBP65,398 to abuse children over a five-year period," said the Agency in a statement.

In an eerie reminder of the case of Roy Huckle, sentenced in 2016 to 22 life sentences in the UK after the Court heard that he pretended to be a teacher and abused in excess of 200 children in Malaysia, Smith worked in schools and orphanages across India and, in particular, in Nepal from 2007 to 2014.

In 2022, Smith moved back to the UK and secured employment as a teacher at a school where he became deputy headmaster and Head of Pastoral Care, providing him with access to vulnerable children.

The Agency says that there is no evidence that he committed offences against children in Nepal or in the UK.

He was arrested after he posted an advertisement for flat-sharing and saying he could help with child care.

Smith pleaded guilty to 22 counts, including encouraging the rape of a child under 13, causing a child under 13 to engage in sexual activity, and arranging the sexual abuse of a child.

Officers recovered over 120,000 indecent images of children (IIOC) which Smith had saved on a laptop, SD card and on his phone.

Smith is unusual in that he was not simply a voyeur of both static and moving images but because he personally took part in sexual activity with children.

This is a significant cause for concern where sex tourism and on-line abuse merge.

photocredit: National Crime Agency UK