A former Blackburn primary school teacher has been jailed for his role in a major probe into an international paedophile ring which spanned more than a decade.

Police swooped on the home of perverted William Chambers after they were notified by the National Crime Agency (NCA) about the arrest of a Belgian national, who was suspected of selling thousands of indecent images of children.

At Blackburn Magistrates’ Court in January, the court was told Chambers was tracked down after the arrested Belgian provided the NCA with the 60-year-old’s phone number.

When police visited his home, in Weavers Court, Preston New Road, they found he had more than 1,500 indecent images of children on his devices.

Chambers, who was working as a teacher during the commission of the offences, pleaded guilty to possession of 166 of the most serious Category A images, 544 Category B images and 854 Category C images.

During his sentencing at Preston Crown Court on Thursday (March 7), it was heard Chambers had worked at  Roe Lee Primary School in Blackburn between September 2020 and 2021, St James Primary School in Burnley between October 2021 and April 2022, and Lower Darwen Primary School between between 1999 and 2012.

The case involving the making of images and downloading of images onto a laptop which was then operated in such a way where images were moved to a hard drive and a TOR browser [software to enable anonymous communication] used.

On at least 15 occasions cleaning software was also deployed.

Prosecuting, Nicholas Flanagan told the court the NCA, in collaboration with Interpol, were investigating an international network of people suspected of abusing children worldwide.

The court heard the investigation started almost 20 years ago, with images taken of children being abused in a number of countries, including Vietnam, India, the Philippines, Morocco, Norway and Myanmar.

Suspects were identified in the UK, Netherlands, France, Canada and Norway, with six of the UK suspects now serving lengthy custodial sentences.

Some of the victims in the case are now adults, the court heard, with many of them coming forward to provide evidence to the NCA as part of the investigation.

Mr Flanagan said: “Analysis of the Belgian national's devices found there were many people communicating regularly and sharing such images, which led to the identification of this defendant.

“There is no evidence of this defendant sharing or distributing images though, he is only concerned with possession.”

Mr Flanagan told the court Chambers had travelled extensively throughout his life, visiting India around 20 times, said to be part of his studies.

He had also visited the Balkan states on numerous occasions from the mid-1990s.

He was arrested on November 11, 2022, and his devices analysed where police found he had thousands of depraved and explicit images, both accessible and inaccessible to officers.

It was also discovered that he had purchased a virtual private network (VPN) in order to conceal his sordid activities, and had deployed software capable of wiping his history.

During his initial police interviews, Mr Flanagan said Chambers was “evasive” and “selective with his answers” even telling one officer, “I must have had them [on my computer] otherwise you wouldn’t have found them”.

Some of the images he had in his possession included young south Asian boys as young as eight years old being abused by adult males.

Harriet Lavin, in mitigation for Chambers, said: “He is 60-years-old now and recovering from colon cancer, is in remission and is incontinent.

“He has missed several doctors’ appointments while he’s been in custody, which is just over three weeks now.

“He described his life as bleak. He has been isolated and suffered from depression and anxiety and being in custody is the first time he’s been socialising with people except for online.

“He is remorseful and is someone who wants to take advantage of the help that is on offer to him.”

Chambers, who was of previous good character, was jailed for 20 months.

He had already been made subject to sex offender registration requirements at a previous hearing, with Judge Ian Unsworth KC imposing notification requirements on Chambers for a period of 10 years.

He was also handed a 10-year sexual harm prevention order and was barred from working with children and young people.

When he is released he will be on license and post sentence supervision.

Forfeiture and destruction of all devices was also ordered. 

Judge Unsworth said: “In summary you have admitted possession of 1,564 images. This occurred over a period of 11 years but it’s since been ascertained that you were in possession of the hard drive for five years.

“You are a paedophile with a perverted sexual interest in young boys.

“You worked at primary schools across Lancashire and must have undertaken these offences while being employed as such.

“You were entrusted to care for young children and had safeguarding responsibilities towards them.

“The schools and parents trusted you to be a proper person to teach but the evidence in this case shows you are someone who is sexually attracted to young boys, and you went to great lengths to satisfy those paedophilic desires by using dedicated software.

“Downloading images perpetuates the problem and encourages the making of further indecent images.

“These children might be further harmed by the knowledge of the perverted gratification that adults like you gained from looking at them, which they only came to realise as they got older.

“This was an extremely thorough investigation by the NCA, but for their hard work your activities would have gone without detection.”

Investigators established that the images on Chambers' devices were supplied over the dark web by a Belgian national who was part of the same group as Christopher Behn, from Essex, and John Thorogood, from London.

Both these men travelled to Asia and Africa respectively over several years to abuse vulnerable young boys.

Behn, from Essex, was jailed for 17 years in November, while Thorogood, from north London, was sentenced to more than seven years imprisonment in December.

Phil Eccles, operations manager at the NCA, said: “Men like William Chambers help fuel the worldwide demand for child sexual abuse material, which in this case was supplied by a group who travelled across the globe to offend.

“By obtaining this material he contributed to the re-victimisation of the children abused in these images.

“Protecting the victims of online child sexual abuse remains of utmost importance to the NCA, and we will continue to target offenders like Chambers and bring them to justice.”