The shit blog of Paul Chris Jones

In 2001 — the year of the iPod, the GameCube, and some Muslims joyriding planes — a fresh-faced 24-year-old dude named Oliver Downes joined a grammar school in Birmingham. He taught Biology and rugby, and he was my A-Level Biology teacher.

Mr Downes was different to the other teachers. His hair was long. He was lively and energetic. He talked fast. He'd often go off-topic during lessons to talk about politics and drugs instead of biology, which might be why I know so much about politics and drugs and why I ended up only getting a D in A-Level Biology.

"Yeah, I took acid," he said casually one lesson. "It's not a big deal. In uni everyone takes it."

One kid asked, "What other drugs did you take in uni, sir?"

"Oh, pretty much all of them. Weed. Cocaine. GHB and MDMA. That's the combo you want for a club: GHB and MDMA. Take those two together and you'll have a great night. Guaranteed."

As far as I remember, no other teacher at school recommended taking drugs.

There was a rumour Mr Downes had sex with his cousin. When we asked him if the rumour was true, he said, "Yeah, it's true." Then he added, "If you saw my cousin you'd fuck her too!"

In many ways, Mr Downes was not a typical teacher. He still lived with his parents, for example. "It's cheap," he explained while biting into a banana. "Like this, I don't have to pay rent."

He didn't own a car either. He took the train to school. A teacher taking the train to school was unheard of.

Also, he was only thirty years old. I think this made him the youngest teacher in the school. When my mom saw him at a parents' evening, she thought he was one of the students instead of a teacher.

And he was always eating bananas in class. "Bananas are full of potassium," he'd say by way of explanation. I couldn't eat bananas at school. Bananas were gay at Bishop Vesey. That's right, bananas were gay at Bishop Vesey. There was so much homophobia at Bishop Vesey's that kids would call you gay just for eating a banana. Just because bananas are shaped a bit like a penis. But Mr Downes didn't care about that. He ate bananas during class and didn't care what the kids thought of him. So I thought he was cool.

Many of the kids thought Mr Downes was trying too hard to be cool, but I liked him. In fact, out of all my teachers, I thought Mr Downes was the coolest. I wanted to be cool like him so I decided to study Biology at university, so I could be a biologist like he was. (In the end, I never did become a biologist, but that wasn't his fault; it's just that I'm lazy and Biology was boring.)

The end of his teaching career

It turned out Mr Downes had a skeleton in his closet, and I don't mean the plastic skeleton he used for teaching.

It all started when the police discovered Mr Downes was growing cannabis. Where he was growing it, I don't know, but I imagine it was in his bedroom with the help of purple UV lamps like you see in films. I guess a neighbour must have noticed the strange purple light coming from his bedroom window and called the police. Cannabis is a class B drug so I imagine the police weren't too happy with all the cannabis plants in Mr Downes's home. Production of a class B drug is a serious offence.

But that's not the worst thing. It seems the police took a look at Mr Downes's computer while they were in his house. And they found child pornography.

Mr Downes pleaded guilty to possessing indecent images of children and for the production of cannabis. He lost his teaching job at Bishop Vesey. The newspapers wrote about him:

Downes had appeared at Birmingham Crown Court where he pleaded guilty to nine counts of making indecent images of children and nine counts of possessing indecent images of children. He had also admitted to the production of a Class B drug, cannabis.

He received a 12-month jail sentence for making indecent images, suspended for two years, along with concurrent suspended sentences of nine months for possession of indecent images and two months for the drugs charge.

He was ordered to carry out 100 hours of unpaid work in the community. He was also ordered to attend a sex offenders’ work program for 50 hours and was placed on a two-year supervision order.

A Bishop Vesey spokesman said:

The school has co-operated fully with the police. The offences relate to the former teacher’s behaviour outside of school and there is no evidence to suggest any child from the school was involved in any way. The member of staff was suspended and resigned on 18 July with immediate effect.

In defence of Mr Downes

To be fair to Mr Downes, a conviction of making indecent images of children sounds worse than it is.

Because it sounds like Mr Downes was making child pornography in a secret basement studio, using boys from Bishop Vesey.

But the legal meaning of "making indecent images" is accessing child porn websites and downloading child porn to your computer. So in the legal sense, if you visit a child porn website, then you are 'making' child porn.

The charge of 'making' [...] covers such activities as opening attachments to emails and downloading or simply viewing images on the internet.

Making indecent images [...] involves the viewing of an image which in turn results in the image being downloaded to the device on which it is viewed.

So I guess Mr Downes visited a child porn website and downloaded some child porn pictures to his computer. He never actually diddled any kids, as far as I know.

I understand that the school had to fire him. I get it that he lost his job. But if I met Mr Downes today, I'd still shake his hand and thank him for being my teacher. He entertained us during lessons and made Biology seem cool, and for that, he has my gratitude.