A supply teacher who secretly took upskirting images of schoolgirls across seven North West schools and used AI to “nudify” pupils’ social media photos has been jailed
A high school teacher who took classroom up-skirting photos of schoolgirls and used AI to “nudify” their social media profile pictures has been jailed for six years. Abusali Rahman used his iPhone in his top pocket while secretly taking up-skirting images of teenagers while working as a supply teacher in seven high schools, Bolton Crown Court heard.
The 37-year-old would also follow behind girls walking upstairs to film and traced youngsters’ social media profiles to “nudify” their images alongside pornography.
And he was only caught when the mother of one girl was scrolling on X, formerly Twitter, and came across an image of her daughter in her school uniform, next to graphic sexual images.
In other images he had super-imposed one girl’s face on a woman wearing a bikini and another in a PVC suit, the court heard. Further images of young females had been posted by the account, with captions such as “daddy”, “agegap” and “ddlgkink” (daddy dom/little girl).
Jailing Rahman for six years, Judge Kenderik Horne told the defendant: “You were a trusted supply teacher, your position of trust gave you access to schools and classrooms, you were trusted to be in close proximity to school girls. You abused that trust.
“You posted images of girls from your schools wearing school uniforms alongside graphic images of sexual activity.” Rahman, of Littleton Road, Salford, was first investigated after a parent spotted her daughter’s image in March 2025 and the girl’s school and police were notified.
Detectives were able to trace one of the X accounts posting the photo “UK Girl5” which was registered to Rahman and had 1,000 followers. Police arrested the defendant and his phone and other devices were seized.
He was re-arrested when police discovered child sexual abuse images, including 226 category C images, such as the up-skirting ones he had taken of girls in classrooms and school corridors, Tom Farr, prosecuting, told the court. They also found 25 category B images and 12 category A images, the latter being images he had downloaded from the internet.
Rahman had also created a document in May 2025 on his phone, which promoted the sale of “candid candy” female sexual content online for a one-time payment of £20. Detectives used geo-location techniques to pin-point classrooms where offences took place along with school uniform identification to locate victims.
The defendant, a British national who holds joint UK-Bangladeshi nationality, qualified as a teacher specialising in English after studying at Manchester Metropolitan University. He gained his teaching degree in July 2023 and by December of the same year had began offending against girls until his arrest in June 2025, the court heard.
A father-of-one, the court heard he approached an Imam to explain his concerns about the thoughts he was having. He was advised to get married and had an arranged marriage to his wife from Bangladesh who came to the UK on a spousal visa.
Rahman worked as a supply teacher at 25 different schools across the North West of England, teaching a number of subjects. The court heard his victims were 15 girls, all aged between 13 and 16, who were pupils at seven different high schools in Bury, Bolton and Salford.
“Disgusted and upset”
As some of the girls were undergoing GCSE exams, detectives left it to individual parents to decide whether to tell their children they had been victims of Rahman’s activities. One girl who had been identified through Rahman’s use of her social media profile photo suffered comments at school and told police she felt embarrassed and “weirded out” and another girl was left “disgusted and upset”.
At an earlier hearing, Rahman pleaded guilty to 12 counts of taking an indecent photograph/pseudo-photograph of a child, obtained by up-skirting. He also admitted four counts of publishing an obscene article.
Moreover, this involved images taken from girls’ social media accounts on which he used AI to manipulate and turn into sexual images, three counts of making indecent photographs/pseudo photographs of a child using AI-generated images. It also included one count of distributing an indecent image of a child by sending an up-skirting image to another person and one count of operating equipment beneath clothing to take images of another without their consent.
“Horrendous”
Emma Kehoe, defending Rahman, said it was not the prosecution’s case that he became a teacher simply to prey on girls. She added: “He knows what he did is horrendous.
“It was through his religious education that led to him studying and becoming a teacher. The reality is, his arrest came as a relief, because there’s nothing in his background to suggest he’s been anything other than a good member of society, father, husband and son.
“He found himself out of control and unable to stop. He did reach out for help. He went to speak to an Imam and shared concerns about his thoughts.”
“Incredibly worrying”
Outside court, Detective Constable Lisa McGaffin of Greater Manchester Police (GMP) said: “It is incredibly worrying and I think, even over the last 12 months, not just as a result of this investigation, but AI technology has grown in our lives, in our work life as well, either making use of it or coming across it, and criminals are using it in ways we didn’t even think would ever happen 12 months ago. As with everything, when you get regulated platforms, you get the unregulated versions, and then you tackle unregulated versions and then more appear.
“It’s a very, very difficult problem. And because there isn’t much legislation around the regulation of AI it makes it even more difficult for police forces to tackle that at the minute.”
Alexandra Mann, a senior Crown prosecutor for the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), said: “Abusali Rahman abused his position as a teacher to capture images of children without their knowledge in a school environment where they were entitled to feel safe. Rahman also created and shared sexualised deepfake images of pupils on social media which is a gross breach of trust.
“Misuse of emerging technology is a serious crime, and it has had a profound impact on both the victims and wider community. We worked with police to piece together strong evidence from his devices and locations at the time the photos were taken to build a comprehensive picture exposing the extent of his offending.
“I hope this case send a clear message that we will robustly prosecute those who use technology to exploit children.” Rahman was also put on the Sex Offenders Register and given a Sexual Harm Prevention Order, banning him from working in schools for 20 years.
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