A FORMER teacher accused of downloading child pornography believes his computer may have been used by someone else without his knowledge.

Patrick Jenkins told Dorchester Crown Court yesterday that the images described to the jury were ‘absolutely disgusting’.

The 32-year-old, who denies 21 charges of making 1,275 indecent images of children, from level one to level five, level five being the most serious, was a chemistry teacher at the Thomas Hardye School in Dorchester up until his arrest in May 2010, although none of the charges relate to children at the school.

In the second day of the trial Jenkins, who now lives in Thornhill Close, Dorchester, gave evidence that he had not been in his flat where the two computers were kept during key dates when there was activity on the devices.

The defendant, originally from Cardiff, produced train tickets and receipts suggesting he was on day trips and overnight visits in Weymouth and London during some of the dates put forward by the prosecution case, and said he often left the door unlocked at the flat on Trinity Street, Dorchester, where he was living at the time.

Since his arrest, he found emails dating back several years signing up to websites he had not visited, he told the court.

He added that he had ‘no idea’ the traces of indecent images were on his computers.

But prosecutor Rufus Taylor told the jury that Jenkins admitted in an interview with police that he may have downloaded some of the images ‘accidentally’ while viewing legal adult pornography.

Mr Taylor said: “You said in that interview that it was predominantly you that had access to the computers. You said ‘this is on my own head’.”

Jenkins replied that he had not known during that interview how many images had been found and what age the children were.

He said: “I meant if there was one image that had accidentally been downloaded it might have been me. I did not say I go out looking for this.

“I was assuming we were talking about a borderline age. I did not think for a minute that we were talking about little children. That’s absolutely disgusting.”

He denied deliberately accessing child pornography, and also denied installing programmes on the computers to wipe the browser history.

Mr Taylor said: “You have to come up with all of this because you cannot accept that you did it.”

The trial continues.