Milton Keynes teacher banned for sending explicit Snapchat images to teenage boy
Ross Bullen, assistant headteacher at Priory Rise School, was barred from teaching after sending unsolicited explicit photos to a teenager on Snapchat.
Milton Keynes teacher barred after explicit Snapchat images sent to teenager
A primary school assistant headteacher has been banned from teaching after sending explicit photographs of himself to a teenage boy on Snapchat, The Independent reports.
Ross Bullen, 38, who worked at Priory Rise School in Milton Keynes, admitted to regularly exchanging explicit images with thousands of people on the platform's disappearing-message feature. He told the tribunal he engaged in the behaviour because he "craved attention" as a "sexual thrill" and said the exchanges made him feel "wanted" and "confident".
The Teaching Regulation Agency (TRA) panel found that Bullen sent six unsolicited images "in various states of undress" — taken in a bedroom or bathroom — to a teenager referred to as person A, sometime between March and May 2023. Person A was neither a pupil at his school nor someone who knew Bullen personally.
Bullen denied sending the images directly to the teenager, suggesting person A must have received them via other adults he was messaging online. The panel rejected that account, noting he had contradicted himself by also acknowledging he made explicit content available to his thousands of Snapchat connections through a public story. He further accepted that some of those connections could have been under the age of 18.
Person A said he had been added by an account named "RossAlex" and had done nothing to invite the images. He screenshotted the content and, using the account's publicly visible location, traced the user back to Bullen's school.
The panel judged person A's evidence to be "more credible" than Bullen's and upheld the allegation. It also noted that during the school's internal investigation, Bullen had been "concerned with protecting his career and had therefore not been as open as he could have been in some accounts."
Giving evidence, Bullen described his own conduct as "stupid", "reckless" and "foolish". "I can see it was really questionable, it is regrettable. I should have behaved differently," he said.
Person A told the tribunal he had informed Bullen he was 15 years old, but the panel said that claim could not be proven because police were unable to recover the relevant message logs. The panel concluded it had not been established, on the balance of probabilities, that Bullen was aware of the teenager's age at the time he sent the images.
The TRA panel found Bullen had brought the teaching profession into disrepute. He is now prohibited from teaching indefinitely and cannot work in any school, sixth-form college, relevant youth accommodation or children's home in England until 13 August 2028, at which point he may apply for a review of the prohibition.
Source: The Independent