Kate Nash’s former music teacher imprisoned over child porn charges
Derek Berditch pleaded guilty of possessing more than 50,000 “loathsome” images
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Your support makes all the difference.Kate Nash’s former music teacher has been imprisoned for 18 months, after pleading guilty to possessing more than 50,000 “loathsome” child abuse and bestiality images.
Derek Berditch, 58, was described by Judge Andrew Goymer as “unfit” to ever return to teaching, after detectives were told by an internet company that child porn was being distributed by a paedophile ring. Police raided his home in February this year.
Berditch taught the singer as head of music at St Joan of Arc catholic school in Hertfordshire.
The prosecution said that he has been using file-sharing websites to download “both adult material and specialised paedophilia type images, owning it and making it available to like-minded individuals”.
One film involved featured sex with an eight-year-old, while another featured child rape.
“This defendant either did not appreciate or did not care about the harm he was doing because he was more interested in his pornography obsession and downloading these images,” said Judge Goymer.
“This is not a harmless hobby like stamp collecting and it is not a victimless offence.
"Time and again I have to make the observation that somewhere in the world a child is being abused and violated by someone to satisfy the depraved tastes of those who download these images."
Nash said in 2013 that Berditch helped inspire her music career.
“He just loved music,” she told the Watford Observer in 2013. “I remember lessons where he would ask if we had heard or seen something and if we said no he would scrap the lesson plan and we would watch Cabaret or listen to an album.
“He was a super music fan and encouraged us to join the choir and learn an instrument. I was lucky to have someone that really encouraged me... to be creative."