Music teacher caught with CAT A images and videos of children


A music teacher who gave singing lessons to children at his home was caught with thousands of images of child abuse on his laptop.
Daniele Calimera, who was a “well-known” musician in Italy who was working in Wales had more than 2,600 indecent pictures and videos of children on his computer and had used search terms such as ‘toddler’.
When he was arrested, the 31-year-old told police: “It’s just curiosity. I don’t do it all the time. It was a moment of weakness.”
Cardiff Crown Court heard police searched his home in Butetown just after 7am on June 2.
David Pugh, prosecuting, said the defendant was “emotional” when officers explained why they were there, pointed at his laptop and said: “It’s me. I downloaded some images.
Police seized his laptop and a forensic examiner found 2,642 indecent pictures, along with seven indecent videos.
Prosecutors said there were 461 of the most serious Category A still images, with one showing a five-year-old girl.
There were also five Category A videos, one lasting for 38 minutes showing children being raped
The examiner found 330 Category B pictures, 1,851 Category C pictures and two Category C videos.
He also discovered peer-to-peer file sharing software eMule and file names like: “11-year-old Ukrainian pre-teen lesbians.”
The court heard the defendant’s search terms included toddler, young boy, paedo, pre-teen and piccolo – which means small in Italian.
When he was interviewed by police, Calimera accepted the laptop was his and stated he had viewed about 10 or 15 of the images.
He said he looked at images of 11-year-olds which looked like they had been taken during photo shoots and described them as “soft” images.
The defendant told officers he had seen thumbnails of “bad” images showing children as young as three, but did not open them because he did not want to view them.
He said he took singing lessons, teaching children aged between seven and 18, some at his home.
Calimera, from Ffordd Garthorne in Butetown, Cardiff, admitted three counts of possessing indecent images of children.
Judge Tracey Lloyd-Clarke jailed him for 12 months and ordered him to register as a sex offender for the next 10 years.
She also made a Sexual Harm Prevention Order, preventing him from having unsupervised contact with children and barring him from working with children and vulnerable people.