A music tutor caught with 3,500 images and videos of child and bestiality pornography has been given a judge’s backing to continue teaching.

The amount of indecent material on the computer of Neil Deller, 42, who has taught privately and in state schools across Essex and Hertfordshire, could have resulted in a three-year jail term.

But instead Judge Christopher Ball QC imposed a community order on Deller, of Birchwood, Birchanger, and ordered that he must attend an internet sex offender treatment programme.

Deller pleaded guilty at Chelmsford Crown Court today (June 14) to seven offences involving downloading and possession of child porn.

The court was told that 3,500 still and moving images were found on his computer, including child porn and bestiality involving dogs and horses.

He was said to have had a daily “fixation” with watching sex assaults on girls as young as three, and the child images ranged from the highest category A to the lowest category C level.

Sparing Deller a jail sentence, the judge said that there was compelling evidence that he did not pose a significant risk of sexually abusing young people.

He said the treatment programme was an alternative to prison when there was “a very real prospect of rehabilitation” and he considered that to be the case with Deller.

In addition to the community order the judge ruled that Deller should be under supervision for three years, carry out 120 hours unpaid work, and imposed a five-year sexual harm prevention order under which Deller’s internet activity is controlled and monitored.

He was also ordered to sign the sex offenders’ register for five years and pay £850 costs.

The court heard how twelve parents of children Deller has continued to teach since his arrest two years ago, and who were aware of his court case, wrote references to the court on his behalf.

Prosecutor Daniel Taylor, seeking to ban Deller from teaching under 18s in the future, said: “He comes into contact with children on a regular basis so it is proportionate in order to protect those individuals.”

But the judge refused and ruled that if Deller teaches under 16s then he must disclose his offences to their parents.

Judge Ball said: “There’s no reported history from any of the people who have had dealings with you. By the very nature of your dealings and teaching them you have had opportunity to interfere with them if that was your interest and that’s not your interest.”

Passing sentence, the judge added: “Over the last ten years there has been a constant stream of cases, almost always male defendants in their middle or late years, who have become involved in, absorbed by, and fixated with internet pornography.

“And the ease with which this material can be accessed, it’s not long before that interest and obsession with pornography descends into a kind which depicts sexual assaults on very young children.

“That’s the downward path you have taken. For a considerable period you have found yourself obsessed on a daily basis with this sort of material.”