Spain’s Supreme Court has upheld the 135-year prison sentence handed down to a British teacher and nanny who made and distributed pornography involving children in his care after changing his name following previous convictions.
Ben David Rose legally changed his identity after being convicted on child pornography charges in Britain, meaning he did not appear as a registered sex offender during background checks in Spain.
Rose, formerly known as Ben David Lewis, was given a two-year suspended sentence in June 2016 for child pornography in the English city of St Albans.
In August of the same year, with a new name and passport, he worked as a nanny in the Spanish city of Zaragoza, before moving to Madrid to babysit two more young children and work as an English teacher in a private school.
When police later searched his phone, they found dozens of photos and videos of him with girls as young as six in a classroom.
Rose was also convicted of photographing three children under the age of 10, naked or in their underwear, and distributing the images on the dark web from his time as a nanny in Zaragoza.
Spain’s Supreme Court upheld Rose’s conviction and sentence in a lower court for crimes involving child pornography, dozens of crimes related to the disclosure of secrets and a single conviction for a “crime against moral integrity.” The total sentence was 135 years in total.
A pedophile teacher who changed his name after being convicted of sex crimes in the UK has been jailed for 138 years in Spain
The verdict in his appeal comes as private schools in Spain are under tighter scrutiny, as police investigate how a lunch monitor at a French school in Barcelona was able to initiate sexual contact with children as young as five.
UK campaigners, including the charity The Safeguarding Alliance, are lobbying the UK government to change the name change law.
“Existing laws allow offenders to circumvent the system, free to hide their identities without being checked,” the charity said.
The three judges who initially convicted and imprisoned the perpetrator found him guilty of eight charges of making child pornography, a felony for inflicting degrading treatment on another person, 32 invasions of privacy and one charge of forgery.
In addition to a lengthy prison sentence, he was also ordered to pay his victims damages ranging from £2,500 to just over £5,000 each.
The British pedophile changed his name by deed poll the day after his conviction.
The judges called the British pervert’s crimes “serious” in their lengthy written ruling, adding: “It will be very difficult for the parents of the children to return to the situation they were in before the perpetrator committed them, even if they receive economic compensation. ‘
Detectives said specialist police in the Australian city of Queensland tipped them off about a “sexual predator” they believed was in Spain, which they identified after a complex investigation delayed by the suspect’s encryption techniques.
Ben David Rose, formerly known as Ben David Lewis, was given a two-year suspended sentence at St Albans Court (pictured) in Herfordshire in June 2016 for sex offenses committed at a summer camp he set up
They revealed he had a criminal record in his native UK and accused him of targeting 36 children aged four to eight after he broke into the Spanish education system.
Ben David Lewis, as he was known before leaving the UK, was arrested in August 2015 after an employee at a summer camp he founded, LL Camps in Bushey, Hertfordshire, had taken nude photos of children under the age of three on his iPhone found it.
Sandra Vicente told St Albans Crown Court that she felt her brain had been ‘polluted’ after coming across the snaps by chance.
She was given the then 26-year-old’s phone and passcode to play music at a children’s party, but found the images in the deleted items after she “got curious” and went to the police.
Officers found children’s underwear next to his laptop and videos he’d shot by pointing his camera at the skirt of a young girl he was tutoring.
Prosecutor Ann Evans said police found searches on one of his iPod Touches such as “Can a sex offender go to the US?”, “Accidentally downloading child pornography” and “How do police search computers?”
He pleaded guilty to three counts of downloading indecent images and one count of making indecent images, but was spared jail after claiming he wanted to get married and have children.
He was also ordered to register as a sex offender indefinitely.
The American-style summer camp he set up with a friend was shut down by Ofsted.