Handyman jailed for framing school caretaker as paedophile

Neil Weiner launched the "wickedly evil and vile plot" hoping to get Eddie Thompson sacked so he could be promoted.

Weiner, 40, was convicted at the Old Bailey of perverting the course of justice and two counts of possessing indecent images of children.

Judge David Paget told him: "What you did to a decent and honest man was in my view wicked.

"It is difficult to imagine a more cunning, deceitful or warped course of conduct."

The court heard how he sent police a CD containing indecent images of children saying they came from Mr Thompson's laptop.

Hundreds more pictures were later found on the computer and the caretaker was arrested in October 2006.

He told police he had been set up by colleagues who did not like him but it was eight months before he was told no further action would be taken.

After Weiner leaked details to a local newspaper, Mr Thompson, 62, received threats and was spat at in public.

Even when he returned from suspension to Swanlea secondary school, in Whitechapel, east London, where he had worked since 1993, Mr Thompson said he was shunned by nearly all the staff.

Jurors heard that Weiner, a computer "wizard" who worked at the school as a handyman assistant, was arrested in 2007 after a mobile phone used to make an initial anonymous call to police about Mr Thompson was traced to him.

Richard Milne, prosecuting, said the child pornography on the caretaker's computer was planted by Weiner "for no better reason than to get him the sack so that he could get promotion, and because he did not like him". The prosecutor told jurors it was "a wickedly evil and vile plot".

Weiner, a married father of two from Dagenham, east London, was convicted in August of three charges.

Yesterday he was given 12 years for perverting the course of justice plus a total of five years for two child pornography charges, to run concurrently.