A MUSIC teacher who posted a sexual picture of two girls “by accident” on a social media website is today a convicted sex offender.

Police found more than 16,000 indecent images of children on Kenneth Nelson’s computer when they raided his home, said Kathryn Reeve, prosecuting.

They were acting on a tip-off from the national Child Exploitation Online Protection police squad after Nelson had posted a picture of two naked girls on the social media platform Pinterest.

Ms Reeve said Nelson maintained he had done so “by accident”.

Nelson, 55, of Garth Close, Wistow, pleaded guilty to three charges of possessing indecent images of children and one of possessing a prohibited image of children.

York magistrates decided his case was too serious for them to deal with and sent him to York Crown Court for sentence on October 20. They also ordered the probation service to prepare a pre-sentence report on him.

For him, Lee-Anne Robins-Hicks said he accepted he had been searching for and downloading sexual images of children. But he was only searching for the least serious pictures and when he had bulk downloaded images, he had inadvertently downloaded a few more serious ones he hadn’t realised were in the download.

She reserved his full mitigation until he is sentenced.

Magistrates heard the images included one in the most serious category, 120 in the middle category and 16,176 in the least serious category. There were also 87 prohibited images.

Nelson was released on bail on condition he does not go into any school grounds or into any school.