TV ad teacher abused teenage pupils

A former teacher who went on to star in a national TV advert has been jailed for sexually abusing three teenage pupils.

Adam Gutteridge appeared before Bournemouth Crown Court where he was sentenced to four years after pleading guilty to 10 sex charges at an earlier hearing.

The 38-year-old, of Earlsfield Road, Earlsfield, London, was teaching at a school in Dorset when the offences took place. He later moved to London and stared in a prime time TV advert.

Sentencing Gutteridge, Judge Peter Johnson said: "You betrayed the trust of your colleagues, parents and most of all the three girls you abused.

"What was going on was disgraceful, damaging conduct on your behalf."

Gutteridge, who worked at the school from September 2002 to August 2007, groomed two of the girls using an internal messaging system at the school with the pretence of helping them with their studies.

Simon Jones, prosecuting, said the messages quickly turned sexual and Gutteridge asked one of the pupils whether she was a virgin.

During webcam chats, Gutteridge also asked the girl to show him her breasts.

The court heard their relationship started with cuddling and kissing, but progressed through to oral sex and eventually full intercourse, with the girl visiting his house on almost a daily basis.

Mr Jones said: "She told police how she hated doing it and it made her feel sick, but she saw the defendant as her boyfriend.

"At times she said she didn't want to and it made her cry."

Gutteridge's relationship with his third victim started in a similar fashion, with the defendant using the internal MSN facility to start up conversations.

He went on to invite her to his home on New Year's Eve to watch films.

"He hugged her and kept telling her what an amazing person she was," Mr Jones told the court.

On another occasion he asked her for a kiss and told her that it was his birthday and that he "deserved it" while he stroked her leg.

He also asked her to send him photographs of herself, telling her that that was what a normal girlfriend would do. As such, she sent him photos of her in her underwear.

"She thought she was in love with the defendant and would tell him this," Mr Jones said.

Gutteridge preyed on another of his victims during a school visit to Plymouth, Devon.

The girl had just split up with her boyfriend and asked to speak to Gutteridge, who was described to the court as a "cool" and popular teacher who the children could talk to easily.

She invited him up to her room where they were staying at the university halls and told police he had seemed drunk.

But not long after he arrived she asked him to leave, to which Gutteridge told the girl he would not go until he had ejaculated.

She later told police she felt she had "dug her own hole" and felt she had to follow through.

It was not until one of the victims saw Gutteridge appearing on a prime time television advert for a recruitment agency that she came forward to police.

In victim impact statements read to the court, the girls said they felt their teenage years had been taken from them, with one adding her "world seems a darker place" now.

She said: "I felt naove, confused and disturbed as a child."

She added it should have been a "happy" last year at school but instead she felt "cheated of a normal adolescence".

Another said that Gutteridge had groomed her into thinking the relationship was "right", but that she now knows her teenage years were taken from her and she never got the chance to do "normal" teenage things.

Gutteridge pleaded guilty to six counts of sexual activity with a child, two of causing or inciting a child to engage in sexual activity and two of sexual activity with a child being a person in a position of trust.

He was sentenced to a total of four years' imprisonment and made subject to the restrictions of the Sex Offenders Register.

Gutteridge had also pleaded not guilty to one count of sexual activity with a child, which the crown accepted and said they would take no further action in connection with that charge.

PA