Devon: Blackmailing Sex Teacher Jailed

14 November 2013, 19:10 | Updated: 14 November 2013, 19:16

A schoolteacher who blackmailed terrified teenage girls into sending him sex pictures of themselves was jailed for six years by Exeter Crown Court on Thursday 14th November.

Zahid Akram, a married day of two young daughters, targeted the victims aged between 13 and 18 he befriended on social networking sites. 

He pretended to be a young man and persuaded them to send him photos of themselves in their underwear, but then said he knew who their parents were and were they lived and threatened to rape two of them as he demanded more sexualised pictures of themselves. 

At Exeter Crown Court Judge Francis Gilbert QC said as he sentenced the 37 year old physics teacher that blackmail was 'an evil crime, one of the ugliest on the criminal calendar'.

The judge said his first victim was a 16 year old Westcountry schoolgirl who passed on her e mail and phone details to Akram who posed as a younger man and then sexualised the conversation and persuaded her to send him some pictures of her in bran and knickers. 

But within three days Akram, from Redditch, Worcs, but then living in Exeter, Devon, texted her saying he wanted 'kinky stuff on a webcam' or he would send the earlier pictures to her parents whose full names he knew after researching the details on Facebook and the internet. 

Akram, who had no previous convictions, was traced and his computer seized after one of his victims bravely contacted police and his degraded secret life which went on from October 2009 until 2012 was exposed. 

He was placed on the Sex Offenders' register and given ban from working with children. 

He will be released after serving half the six year term