A CHILD welfare assistant who covertly filmed children in a toilet at a primary school has been jailed for seven years.

25 children were identified on 57 videos found on computers at Adam Curnock’s home.

He had placed a wireless camera in the disabled toilet at Harwood Meadows Primary School and had filmed the children, aged between three and ten, over a period of 12 months as they dressed and undressed.

He even used a camera disguised as a pen to capture images by looking up the skirts of female children, one of whom was sitting on his lap at the time.

Curnock, who had previous convictions, was employed to look after the children — and Bolton Crown Court heard how he had had a good relationship with them and their parents.

The Honorary Recorder of Bolton, Judge Timothy Clayson, told 31-year-old Curnock that the crimes had been “a very grave breach of trust”.

The judge said: “All these children were in your care and you repeatedly used that fact and their trust in you to assist you to commit the offences."

In addition to the filming, Curnock — who had also previously worked as a cleaner at the school — pleaded guilty to voyeurism, five charges of making indecent images of children and one count of sexual assault, all committed at the school premises over a 12-month period.

During the police investigation and a raid on Curnock’s Harley Avenue, Harwood, home in November last year, police found he had downloaded from the internet huge numbers of indecent images and videos of children.

Many of the downloads were in the most extreme category.

Curnock admitted making indecent images of children, three counts of possessing a total of 2,835 indecent images of children, possessing prohibited images and possessing extreme pornography.

Parents of several of Curnock’s young victims sat silently in the public gallery at court as he was sentenced to seven years in jail, placed on the sex offenders' register for life and subjected to an indefinite sexual offences prevention order which bans him from having unsupervised contact with children.

After the sentencing, Det Ch Insp Sara Wallwork said: “These offences are a gross violation of the children’s privacy and trust. His actions were deliberate and calculated and he has rightly been jailed for these terrible crimes."

The case continues to be investigated by the police’s professional standards branch amid allegations that they had received intelligence about Curnock at an earlier stage.