Ex-ICT teacher Matthew Gilkes jailed for 16 years over upskirting and online grooming

A former ICT teacher, Matthew Gilkes, has been jailed for 16 years after police found more than a million upskirting images and other indecent material involving pupils, along with evidence that he used covert cameras and online accounts to groom and coerce girls.

Gilkes, 47, was identified in Chorley, Lancashire, after reports that children had seen a mobile phone pushed beneath cubicle doors at a leisure centre changing area in August 2024. Lancashire Police said his vehicle was traced leaving the premises, leading to his arrest. Officers later searched his home and workplace and seized more than 80 devices, including mobile phones, computers and laptops, spy pens and other concealed cameras, as well as memory cards containing thousands of indecent images and videos.

Prosecutors said many of the images depicted pupils from the school where he had worked. The devices included a school-issued laptop and cameras disguised as pens and small “cube” cameras, which investigators said were used to capture images underneath clothing without consent. Authorities reported that the scale of the material amounted to more than a million images.

Police also found evidence that Gilkes used...