An assistant headteacher at a primary school who was caught sending explicit pictures of himself to a teenage boy on Snapchat said he “craved attention” as a “sexual thrill”, a tribunal heard.
Ross Bullen admitted to regularly swapping explicit pictures with thousands of people on the disappearing messaging app while a primary school teacher at Priory Rise School, Milton Keynes.
The 38-year-old, who said the sex chats made him feel “wanted” and “confident”, was barred from teaching for at least two years after a Teaching Regulation Agency (TRA) panel found he brought the profession into disrepute.
Giving evidence, Mr Bullen, who denied ever sharing the images with the teenager (dubbed person A), described himself as “stupid”, “reckless” and “foolish” for engaging in risky online behaviour.
“I can see it was really questionable, it is regrettable. I should have behaved differently,” he said.
The tribunal heard Mr Bullen sent six unsolicited images “in various states of undress” from a bedroom or bathroom to person A around March and May 2023.
Mr Bullen suggested person A, who did not know the teacher nor was he a pupil of his, must have received the images from the other adults he messaged online.
But the tribunal found that Mr Bullen “contradicted” himself when he also said he made his explicit pictures available to his thousands of Snapchat connections on his public story.
He also accepted that it was possible some of his connections were under the age of 18.
In his account, person A said he had been added by an account named “RossAlex” and that he “did nothing” to encourage the sending of the images.
Person A screenshotted the images and using the account’s public location later traced the user to Mr Bullen’s school.
The panel found person A’s evidence to be “more credible” and upheld the allegation that Mr Bullen sent the sexually explicit images to the teenager.
It said: “Mr Bullen had also confirmed in oral evidence that during the School’s investigation he was concerned with protecting his career and had therefore not been as open as he could have been in some accounts.”
However, the panel found Mr Bullen did not know the teenager’s age “on the balance of probabilities” when he sent the images.
Person A also claimed he told the teacher he was 15 years old, but the panel said this could not be “proven” as the message logs could not be recovered by the police.
It said: “The panel did not consider that it had been proven that it was likely that Mr Bullen was aware of person A’s age when he sent the images to him.”
Mr Bullen is prohibited from teaching indefinitely and cannot teach in any school, sixth form college, relevant youth accommodation or children’s home in England until August 13 2028, when he may apply for a review.
