A SCHOOL tennis coach from Teignmouth who asked under-age girls to send him sexual Snapchat selfies while posing as a 17-year-old boy has been given a suspended jail sentence.

Mark Syms, 56, lost his job at Trinity School after police found hundreds of child abuse images on his computer and 717 online chats in which he asked girls to send him pictures of their breasts.

He used online names and installed special software to clean his hard drive as he accessed illegal images from a file sharing site.

Police found more than 750 indecent images but identified 205,518 further files.

Syms had worked at the 300 pupil private school for 25 years, coaching children aged five to 18 but lost his job after his arrest last year and is currently selling his home.

He was identified through his IP address after police monitoring file sharing sites noticed he was searching for and downloading files with names including Lolita.

Officers found online chats but were unable to ascertain whether they were with real children, decoys, or other adults posing as children. 

Syms, of Exeter Road, Teignmouth, admitted making, by downloading, or possessing indecent images of children and attempted sexual communications with a child and was jailed for 18 months, suspended for 18 months by Judge James Patrick at Exeter Crown Court.

He was ordered to do 80 hours of unpaid community work and 30 days of rehabilitation activities, put on the sex offenders’ register for 10 years and made subject to a sexual harm prevention order for the same time.

The order enables police to monitor Syms’s online activity. He will be prevented from working with children automatically by the Declaration and Barring Service.

The judge told him: ‘It is a tragedy to see a talented man, who has committed himself to helping young people, exhibiting a very dark side indeed. For a limited period of time, you obtained sexual gratification from watching images of children being raped and sexually abused. 

‘You are a man of hitherto good character who has lost his employment and good name.’

The prosecution said Syms was arrested after a search warrant was executed in June 2023, and analysis showed he had 789 images and two movies including 293 in the worst category.

Police also found 717 Snapchat chats, apparently with teenage girls in which he posed as a 17-year-old boy and engaged in sexual conversations with under age girls. He used a photo of a young male model to hide his true age.

Miss Zarreen Alam-Cheetham, defending, said Syms had made full and open admissions to the police and expressed his remorse from the outset. 

She said there were references from Syms’s wife and daughter, who are both standing beside him.

After the case, headmaster Robert Robinson said: ‘Trinity worked closely with the police during their investigation and there was no link made to any pupils in the school or to his tennis coaching at Trinity.’