Oz teacher walks free after filming up schoolgirls' skirts!

Melbourne, July 28 : An ex-schoolteacher charged for making porn clips by filming up the skirts of schoolgirls, is now a free bird after a Sydney court dealt with him leniently.

Robert Ian Drummond, former teacher at Cromer High School on Sydney's northern beaches, was convicted last month for producing and possessing pornography. But now Magistrate Julie Huber at Sydney's Downing Centre Local Court sentenced this 42-year-old man to just a suspended 4-month jail term and a 3-year good behaviour bond.

Drummond was first caught red-handed when a 14-year-old girl noticed him filming up her skirt with a video camera hidden inside a bag placed at her feet in Warringah Mall in May last year.

Two videos featuring the 14-year-old and another girl, aged 16, filmed in the same fashion at Manly Council Library, were recovered by the police from his home.

However, after the judgement, Drummond refused to speak to reporters while he left the court.

His lawyer, Peter Gow, told the court earlier that Drummond's mother described him as "depressed" and "isolated".

"Something seems to have happened to him (Drummond) in his mid-30s. He's developed this defeatist mentality which slowly eroded his strength of character and he lost sight of things most reliable to him, such as his personal relationships ... which culminated in the subject's behaviour," News.com.au quoted him, as saying.

Gow said that Drummond's mother had described her son as "pessimistic, depressed, isolated in recent years ... and emotionally withdrawn".

And when his mother asked him how he could commit such a crime, he had replied: "I was delusional in my thinking, I lost my values, I lost my way. I did what I did because I wasn't hurting anyone."

ANI