A teacher from Weston-super-Mare has been banned from the classroom and sentenced to 20 months in prison after watching online footage of a six-month-old baby and a six-year-old boy being raped.

Wayne Brookes, of Arundell Road, was jailed on Tuesday after earlier pleading guilty at Bristol Crown Court to four counts of making indecent photographs and pseudo-photgraphs of a child.

Brookes, aged 43, was arrested in May 2016 after police discovered more than 300 videos and pictures of children being abused in his home.

The National Crime Agency unearthed the online chat room where paedophiles shared videos, pictures and messages of children as young as six months old being abused.

The court heard how Brookes, who worked at West Leigh Primary School in Backwell, had access to the online forum for five years from 2011 to 2016.

He was one of 46 users who logged on to watch live footage of a six-year-old being raped, with site visitors urging the rapist to ‘smack the boy’ and ‘ask him to say hi’ to prove it was live.

Virginia Cornwall, mitigating, argued Brookes had not known it was a live feed, but Judge Martin Picton said: “He was in a virtual room with a group of other paedophiles and he runs the risk of the events being live.”

Mr Jones said: “The online platform required a 10-digit code to access it so Brookes would have had to have taken steps to get the code.”

Judge Picton, in sentencing, told Brookes: “You offended in this way when you were working as a teacher, responsible for young children.

“It would have caused alarm and distress to the community – parents, fellow teachers and pupils would have been horrified by the revelation that one of their number chooses to offend in this way outside of school life.”

Brookes was also handed a 10-year sexual harm prevention order – in the hope it will stop him from reoffending – and ordered to sign to the sex offenders register for 10 years.

Judge Picton told Brookes he would ‘never work with children again’ and his computer and hard drive, where the footage was found, would be forfeited and destroyed.

A South West NSPCC spokesman said: “The children in these horrific live videos of rape and serious sexual assaults are the victims of appalling child abuse and the experiences they endured for this material to be created should never be ignored.

“Although none of Brooks’ offences related to pupils at his school, he was working with young children in a position of trust when he chose to commit these despicable and shocking crimes.”