Primary school headmaster Andrew Melville was part of child porn ring
Andrew Melville, 47, a married father-of-three, was exposed when police seized his computers after a tip-off.
He had about 457 sick images - most of girls from eight to 15 - and has now admitted exchanging them with other perverts in online chat rooms.
A court heard yesterday that Melville has been sacked from Whitecraig Primary in Musselburgh, where he had been head since November 2007.
At Edinburgh Sheriff Court, he admitted possessing and distributing the images between 2004 and 2005 and Siobhan Monks, prosecuting, said: "There was no evidence of any internet searches. It was all through email."
Two images were found to be of the most explicit on the scale used to measure depravity. A further nine were of the next highest rating.
Miss Monks said most of the images were of children in provocative poses but some included full sex with adults.
Sheriff Alistair Noble deferred sentence until January and put Melville on the sex offenders' register.
He has also been banned from using the internet and is not allowed to have unsupervised contact with children under 16.
Daily Record
A FORMER headteacher has admitted exchanging hundreds of child pornography images by e-mail over the course of a year.
Police found over 450 illegal pictures on a laptop computer seized from the home of Andrew Mark Melville, the former head of Musselburgh's Whitecraig Primary, after a tip-off sparked an investigation.
The 47-year-old, who has since been sacked by East Lothian Council, had some of the most disturbing images seen by police on a laptop in his loft.
Father-of-three Melville admitted being in possession of indecent pictures of children at his home in Muirfield Station, Gullane, at Edinburgh Sheriff Court yesterday.
Melville also pleaded guilty to distributing or showing the pictures between June 13, 2004 and May 30, 2005.
The schoolmaster had exchanged the pictures through e-mail messages with people he met in America On Line (AOL) chat rooms.
Officers searching his computers discovered 457 child pornographic images, including two images rated the most explicit on the scale used to measure such material by police.
Sheriff Alistair Noble deferred sentence until January but placed Melville on the sex offenders register before continuing his bail.
Edinburgh Evening News