A music teacher’s secret 10-month sexual relationship with a student was discovered when her father saw a video clip of him performing a sexual act on her computer.
Father-of-two Steven Rundle, who had been having sex with the man’s daughter in a music room at her school in Dacorum was also exchanging explicit images with the teenager.
After rumours spread around the school that the self-employed peripatetic guitar teacher was having a relationship with the girl, he was confronted by the headteacher.
Rundle, 31, denied anything was going on, but he was sent on a child protection course, St Albans Crown Court heard on Friday.
Hilary Neville, for the Crown Prosecution Service, said the girl’s parents were not told about the relationship, which had begun in June 2010, and it continued.
She said Rundle helped out at school productions and went on a music trip to Germany. He would meet the girl, who he never formally taught, in a old netball storage room at the school that had been converted into a music room.
By September 2010 he and the girl were exchanging sexual images of each other over the internet. At the same time the teenager was carrying out part time cleaning work at his home and acting as a babysitter for his children.
On his return from the child protection course in October the girl said that he told her it was too much of a risk to continue. But they decided they could not end it because it was too upsetting to be apart.
The relationship came to light in April last year when her father saw a video clip of a man performing a sex act on her computer.
The father confronted the headteacher and Rundle was arrested at his former home in Aylesbury. His computer was seized. On it the police found 96 indecent still images of the girl - they were all at Level 1, the lowest level. There were also eight video images - three at Level 1 and five at Level 2.
At first Rundle denied they had sex, but he requested a second interview where he admitted it.
Rundle, of Wendover Road, Aylesbury, pleaded guilty to sexual activity with a child under 18 while in a position of trust, making indecent photographs of a child and possessing indecent photographs of a child.
Justice Nichol passed a 12 month sentence suspended for two years. He passed a two year order banning him from teaching girls aged under 18 privately or in any establishment.
Rundle must sign the sex offenders register for 10 years. The judge accepted he had not groomed the girl but said: “It was a breach of trust.”