Parents' anger at 'shameful' sentence for child porn head

Published on Wednesday 14 January 2009 09:19

PARENTS have hit out after their primary school headmaster was handed 150 hours of community service after being found guilty of child porn charges.

Andrew Melville, 48, former headmaster at Whitecraig Primary School, East Lothian, was sentenced yesterday after pleading guilty last December to possessing hundreds of indecent images of children.

The father-of-three, from Muirfield Station, Gullane, was initially suspended and then finally sacked by the council last July.

At Edinburgh Sheriff Court yesterday, he was handed a three-year probation order which will bar him from unsupervised access to children and monitor his use of the internet.

Sheriff Alistair Noble also ordered him to carry out 150 hours of community service and he will be placed on the sex offenders register for three years.

But parents criticised the lenient sentence as "disgraceful" and "shameful".

Graham Doran, 36, who has three children at the school, said: "This has been hanging over the village for the last year and it's been the only topic of conversation.

"We were all absolutely devastated when the truth finally came out about Melville. We still can't quite believe it to be true.

"He was the last person you would think to be associated with anything like this. The first thing to go through your head is 'was he doing anything with our kids while at school?'

"It makes me sick to the stomach just thinking about it.

"To be given only six months for what he has done is disgraceful.

"It really is a shameful decision by the courts to be so lenient."

And mum Michelle Hall, 21, said: "Someone like him should be made an example of, as, after all, he was a pillar of the local community and someone we should have been able to trust wholeheartedly with our children's safety.

"It was such a shock to find out the truth about him because up until then he had been an amazing influence on the school."

A tip-off to police in March had led to a raid on his home, during which police discovered a laptop belonging to Melville that contained 457 pictures of children, mainly female.

But when a local paper reported Melville's arrest, a teacher at the school ordered the janitor to buy up all copies of the paper at the only shop in the village.

East Lothian Council is refusing to name or discipline the female teacher for taking the "awful" decision.

Angry mum Tracey Doran, 35, said: "I don't know what they were thinking because the story was all over the television and radio that day, so they were wasting their time and money. But to try and dupe us all like that is a disgrace. Someone should be reprimanded."

A council spokesman said the action was "extremely regrettable."

Melville, who has no previous convictions, was appointed head teacher at Whitecraig Primary School in Musselburgh in 2007, after serving as the deputy head for six months.

He had previously been employed at Gullane Primary School, which is situated just yards from his family home.

Police have confirmed that no images of East Lothian children were involved.