Handyman jailed for planting child porn on caretaker

A HANDYMAN who ruined a school caretaker’s life by planting child pornography on his computer was jailed for 12 years yesterday.

Neil Weiner, 40, launched the “wickedly evil and vile plot” hoping to get Eddie Thompson sacked so that he could be promoted.

Weiner was convicted of perverting the course of justice and two counts of possessing indecent images of children at the Old Bailey.

Judge David Paget told him: “What you did to a decent and honest man was in my view wicked.

“It is difficult to imagine a more cunning, deceitful or warped course of conduct than yours in this case, or a more malicious one.”

The court heard how he sent police a CD containing indecent images of children saying they came from Thompson’s laptop. Hundreds more pictures were later found on the computer and the caretaker was arrested in October 2006.

He told police he had been set up by colleagues who did not like him but it was eight months before he was told no further action would be taken.

When the details of the allegations were leaked by Weiner to a local newspaper, Thompson and his wife became afraid to leave the house, after he received threats and they were spat at in public.

Even when he returned from suspension to Swanlea secondary school, in Whitechapel, east London, where he had worked since 1993, Mr Thompson said he was shunned by nearly all the staff, making his life “almost unbearable”.

“My life and good name was nearly destroyed by a villain who tried to destroy my reputation in a monstrous manner,” said the Scottish-born caretaker, 62, in a victim impact statement read to the court.

“This must be the work of a depraved mind.”

Weiner, a computer “wizard” who worked at the school as a handyman assistant, was arrested in 2007 after a mobile phone used to make an initial anonymous call to police about Thompson was traced to him.

Richard Milne, prosecuting, said the child pornography was planted by Weiner “for no better reason than to get him the sack so that he could get promotion, and because he did not like him”.

Some of the images were level 4, the second most serious.

Weiner, a married father of two from Dagenham, east London, was convicted in August of the three charges he faced. Yesterday he was given a 12-year sentence for perverting the course of justice plus five years for two child pornography charges, to run concurrently.

Weiner discovered the caretaker’s password by looking over his shoulder but was caught doing so. When asked why he did not change it, Thompson said he wished he had, adding: “Who in their worst nightmares would could have thought that anyone could stoop to do what he did?”