Boss of photo firm that offered to delete disabled children from school class photo says he is ‘devastated’ and is holding ‘crisis meetings’ to discover what happened

A photography company boss who ‘devastated’ mothers by offering to remove disabled children from class photos has described the offer as ‘unacceptable’

Terence Tempest, 70, revealed that ‘heartbroken’ bosses were locked in crisis meetings to discover ‘what on earth had happened’.

It comes after three children at Aboyne Primary School in Scotland were removed from images sent via an internet link, giving parents the option to order a photo without them being in it.

Speaking from his riverside home near Falmouth, Cornwall, Mr Tempest said: ‘We are heartbroken. We put out a statement, but right now I’m trying to figure out what spurred this on and what on earth happened.

‘It’s just unacceptable, I don’t know what happened. It is certainly not our policy.

‘This morning we had a crisis meeting, this afternoon we have another one.’

Asked whether he would apologize to the families involved, Mr Tempest said: ‘Of course I understand how upset the families must be, I would be too.

‘If I were in that position I would want an apology. I do not run the company and am currently in contact with the managing director, who will decide what happens next.’

Mr Tempest was unable to explain why parents were given the option to choose photos without children with additional support needs and says the freelance photographer may have decided to do this.

He said: “I’m honestly not sure what the current policy is, it depends on what we are asked to do. We simply respond to what is asked of us.

‘There is another meeting coming up and we will find out if the photographer was asked for that. Did they do it on their own?’

Businesswoman and mother-of-two Natalie Pinnell, 38, told MailOnline that the decision to leave her nine-year-old daughter Erin out of her class photo had ‘devastated’ their family.

She described the decision by Cornwall-based Tempest Photography as ‘inhumane’ and said her child had been ‘erased from history’.

Mrs Pinnell said: ‘You can’t erase them because they are a nuisance. It’s just not okay.

‘It’s devastating to have your child erased from a photo or to give parents the choice of whether or not she can be in the photo.

‘She is the most beautiful person. Who could do this?

‘I’m grateful she isn’t aware of it because the damage it would do to her self-esteem would be devastating.

“But I have to tell my other daughter what’s happening to her sister. I’m not sure I’m going to sleep tonight.’

Natalie, who runs a business management and strategy firm in Aboyne, said after she received an email from the school with two photo links: one with her daughter and one without.

Another class with a disabled girl in a wheelchair also had two photos: one with the schoolgirl and one without.

Natalie added: “I checked with the school and they checked with the photographer. He said, ”Yes, that’s what we did.”

‘It is the most traumatic experience we have had as a family.

‘I really wanted to believe there was another reason. I tried to look for a reason why someone would have made that decision.

‘We have mourned. We hurt. It feels like I haven’t even reached the bottom of my shock yet. It’s been absolutely devastating.

‘The worst part was when I spoke to a friend about what had happened and she discovered there were two connections for her daughter.’

Natalie said the school, which has a special additional needs centre, had vowed never to use the company again.

She added: “It was hard to process as a family. As a mother, I want to stand up for her, and for people to think she is erasable is incredibly devastating.

‘It is incomprehensible to give parents the choice of whether or not to involve one individual child, because it does not fit in.’

Natalie wasn’t the only mother outraged by the shocking decision.

Lisa Boyd’s nine-year-old daughter Lily Nicolson, who has cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair, was also left out of one of the class photos along with another boy.

She said: ‘This is clear discrimination and should not happen in a school or anywhere else.

‘It’s the worst Lily has been treated in her entire life. The school is so inclusive that Lily is involved in everything the school does.

‘Her twin sister, Iona, is in a different class and I only have one photo for that class, but I have two for Lily’s – one without my child in it. It’s terrible.’

Another outraged mother, Natalie Wild, 45, also revealed how a photographer from the same company asked her daughter Tilly, who has serious vision problems, to take off her thick glasses for a photo.

Ms Wild, a commercial property developer, said the request made her daughter feel “vulnerable and scared” because she relies on her 17x magnification glasses and considers them part of her.

She complained to the company after the incident in September 2022, when Tilly was in her first year at Immaculate Conception Catholic Primary School in Spinkhill, Derbyshire.

But after being told this shouldn’t have happened, another photographer from the company made the same request to her daughter last September when the company returned to the school to take annual photos.

The company says it is investigating.

The First Minister was asked about the reports when he visited a soft play center in Cumbernauld. He called it ’embarrassing, really terrible’.

He told the PA news agency: ‘This should never have happened at all.

‘I don’t want to see another example of that anywhere in Scotland. It’s not acceptable, it’s not right.

‘And I am glad that the responsible municipality has apologised.’