By Calvin Palmer
A teaching assistant was given a two-and-a-half jail sentence today for her part in a child pornography operation that filmed young girls as they bathed.
Rosemary Foxall, 49, of Brownhills, West Midlands, prepared baths for the girls while her husband, Martin, secretly filmed them.
Her husband has since committed suicide.
Earlier this month, Foxall was found guilty of 10 charges of making child pornography and another charge of possessing 147 indecent photographs of children.
Sentencing her at Wolverhampton Crown Court, Judge Nicholas Webb said: “The person who physically made those images was your husband, but you knew what he was doing and fully assisted him. You may not have done it but for him but he couldn’t have done it but for you.”
The judge said the crimes were committed “very cleverly” and said the offences represented “a monstrous breach of trust and the grossest invasion of privacy”.
He said pornography and sex aids were also left “lying about” for the children to see, and that although the secret films were recorded on to VHS tape and had probably not been distributed, the victims could never be sure the footage would not be circulated on the Internet in future.
The couple offered their victims toys, discos and swimming pools with water slides as incentives to come to their home.
They were then filmed through a spy hole above a bath and by a camera hidden under a pile of clothes in a bedroom.
Foxall was arrested after a fire at their home in July 2008, when a fire officer spotted a video recorder in the loft with wires leading to hidden cameras, which were trained on the couple’s bedroom, their bathroom and toilet.
Police later found videos made by her husband.
The judge also banned Foxall from ever working with children again and ordered she be placed on the sex offenders register.
[Based on reports by The Daily Telegraph and The Birmingham Post.]
