A classroom staff member who took covert upskirt photographs of students and then manipulated their social media pictures using artificial intelligence tools has been sentenced to six years in custody.
Prosecutors at Bolton Crown Court outlined how Abusali Rahman, a supply teacher who had worked across seven secondary schools, used an iPhone hidden in his breast pocket to capture images under the clothing of teenage pupils without their knowledge. He positioned himself behind girls on staircases to capture footage, and separately located their social media accounts to alter their images by placing them alongside pornographic material.
The arrest came after a parent, while browsing X — the platform previously known as Twitter — noticed a post placing her daughter's school-uniform photograph alongside explicit sexual content. Among the remaining images, the face of one girl had been digitally placed onto a photograph of a woman dressed in a bikini, while another girl's face appeared on a separate image of a woman in a PVC outfit.
The profile had also uploaded photographs of minors, tagging them with terms including "daddy", "agegap", and "ddlgkink" — a reference to the daddy dom/little girl concept.
Imposing a six-year custodial term on Rahman, Judge Kenderik Horne addressed him directly, stating that his role as a supply teacher had placed him in a position of trust that granted him regular access to school premises and classrooms, where he was permitted to work in close contact with female pupils. The judge told Rahman that photographs of uniformed schoolgirls had been placed alongside explicit sexual material on the same platform, and that the case against him — Rahman residing at Littleton Road in Salford — began after a parent identified her daughter among those images in March 2025, prompting notification of both the relevant school and police.
When detectives traced one of the X accounts distributing the image — a profile operating under the name "UK Girl5" — the handle turned out to be connected to Rahman, with approximately 1,000 other accounts among its followers. Following the arrest, officers took possession of the defendant's mobile phone along with additional electronic devices.
Prosecution counsel Tom Farr told the court that a further arrest followed after officers found 226 category C indecent images on his devices, among them photographs he had covertly taken beneath the clothing of girls in school classrooms and corridors. Among the additional material recovered were 25 images classified at category B level and a further 12 at category A, with the latter group having been sourced from online platforms.
A file stored on Rahman's phone, put together in May 2025, outlined a scheme to sell explicit imagery of women under the label "candid candy" through a single upfront payment of £20. Classroom locations were narrowed down through geo-location analysis, while school uniform details helped officers trace the young people affected.
Rahman completed his English teaching qualification through Manchester Metropolitan University. He holds both British and Bangladeshi citizenship. Prosecutors told the court that within months of receiving his teaching qualification in July 2023, he had carried out offences against girls, a pattern that continued until his arrest in June 2025.
Testimony before the court revealed that Rahman, who has one child, sought out an Imam to discuss thoughts he had been experiencing. A marriage was arranged for him following advice to that effect, with his wife travelling from Bangladesh to join him in the UK under a spousal visa. Over the course of his career, Rahman took on supply teaching roles spanning 25 schools throughout the North West of England, covering a range of different subjects.
Fourteen teenage girls enrolled across seven secondary schools in Bury, Bolton, and Salford — ranging in age from 13 to 16 — were among those he offended against, along with one further victim of the same age bracket. Decisions about informing the girls — some of whom were sitting GCSE examinations at the time — that they had been among those affected by Rahman's conduct were left by officers to each family to make as they saw fit.
Two of the young women whose identities Rahman traced through profile photographs on social media experienced distinct harms: one faced remarks from peers at school and told officers she felt both embarrassed and unsettled, while the other described her reaction to police as one of disgust and distress.
At a prior court appearance, Rahman entered guilty pleas across a total of 21 charges: 12 relating to the capture of indecent photographs or pseudo-photographs of a child through up-skirting; four tied to the publication of obscene material; three involving the production of indecent photographs or pseudo-photographs of a child by way of AI-generated imagery; one concerning the transmission of an up-skirting image to another individual; and one covering the covert use of equipment placed beneath a person's clothing to record images without that person's knowledge or agreement.
Defence barrister Emma Kehoe told the court that the prosecution had not put forward any claim that Rahman took up teaching with the intention of targeting female pupils. She told the court that Rahman understood at the time that what he had done was wrong, and that his path toward a teaching career took shape through the religious education he received. Those who knew him described a person with no prior indicators of trouble — a devoted family member and, by all accounts, a consistent presence in his community. Kehoe told the court that Rahman had lost control of his behaviour and had sought assistance, including approaching a religious leader to discuss the thoughts that had been troubling him.
Detective Constable Lisa McGaffin of Greater Manchester Police said the pace at which artificial intelligence had embedded itself into everyday and professional life had accelerated to a point where its use by those engaged in criminal activity was taking forms that law enforcement had not anticipated even a year earlier. She said regulated platforms tend to give rise to unregulated alternatives, and that as those alternatives are addressed, new ones take their place.
McGaffin acknowledged the matter presented no straightforward path to resolution, and noted that the absence of established legislative frameworks governing artificial intelligence compounded the difficulties faced by police in addressing such offences.
Alexandra Mann, a Crown Prosecution Service senior prosecutor, told the court that Rahman had exploited his role as a teacher to record images of pupils without their awareness, in a school setting where those children had a reasonable expectation of safety. She said he also produced and distributed sexualised deepfake images of students through social media platforms, conduct that prosecutors described as a violation of the trust placed in him. Mann stated that those who target children through digital means would face the full weight of the law.
Investigators drew on data extracted from Rahman's devices alongside location records tied to when each image was captured to construct an account of the full scope of his offending. Rahman was placed on the Sex Offenders Register and made subject to a Sexual Harm Prevention Order blocking him from school-based work for twenty years.
