A forty-one-year-old former Suffolk primary school headmaster who downloaded more than a million indecent images of children and had a “paedophile manual” has been jailed for five years.

When police raided Thomas Singleton’s Stowmarket home in February 2021 they found a toddler-sized doll, dressed in a pink dress with its blond hair in plaits, in his bed, children’s clothing and other items, Ipswich Crown Court heard.

When electronic devices belonging to Singleton, who was also the safeguarding lead at the school, were examined it was found he had superimposed his face and the face of a former pupil onto a picture of a child being sexually abused by a man with Singleton’s face.

Sentencing Singleton, recorder Richard Christie said: "Fortunately these offences haven’t gone on to lead to actual acts against any of the children in your charge but child pornography is a scourge and has very real victims.

“For every indecent image you view a child or children have been abused.”

Singleton admitted three offences of making indecent images of children, two offences of taking indecent images of children, possessing a paedophile manual, possessing prohibited images and possessing extreme pornographic images.

In addition to jailing him for five years, Recorder Christie imposed an extended licence period of one year because he regarded Singleton as a dangerous offender.

Singleton was also made the subject of an indefinite sexual harm prevention order and ordered to sign the sexual offenders’ register for the same period.

The court heard that experts who examined electronic devices belonging to Singleton, who has no previous convictions, found 20,254 indecent images of children in the most serious level A category, 21,539 level B images and more than one million indecent images of children in the lowest level C category.

They also found 45,216 prohibited images of children and 52 extreme pornographic images as well as 13 category A pseudo indecent images of a child and 24 pseudo images in category B.

During the police search of Singleton’s home officers found a handwritten document entitled “ Tom’s Action Plan” which described explicit sex acts with children and mentioned the first names of four children he’d previously taught.

They also found a 170 page "paedophile manual".

The court heard that the children whose names were mentioned in the “Action Plan” had since been contacted by the police and confirmed that Singleton hadn’t done anything to them.

The court heard that officers from the National Crime Agency went to Singleton’s home after receiving information that devices registered to him at that address had accessed indecent images of children.

Singleton, who was described as having an “obsession“ with collecting the indecent images found in his possession, had resigned from his position at the school, which wasn’t named during the hearing, in March 2020.

Natasha Nair for Singleton who attended the sentencing hearing via a prison video link said he’d voluntarily taken steps to address his offending behaviour through therapy since his arrest

She accepted his offending was “troubling and disturbing” and said Singleton recognised the concern his offending would cause members of the public.