A Bay of Plenty man who admitted distributing child pornography on the internet drove a school bus - and police were apparently never told, National MP Tony Ryall says.
Police Minister George Hawkins told Parliament yesterday he was asking the Department of Internal Affairs how this had happened.
Graeme Clyde Eyre from
Taneatua, 13km south of Whakatane, was caught by London police investigating a child pornography operation.
Eyre was discovered placing pictures of naked boys, in sexual poses or acts, on the internet.
He used the Yahoo message centre in 2003 under the nicknames "cuite14nz2000" and "myboy2nz".
In a search of Eyre's property, seized CDs and disks were found to contain 285 pictures of boys aged between eight and 15 being sexually abused or posing naked.
The Department of Internal Affairs took a prosecution and in Whakatane District Court last week Eyre pleaded guilty to six charges of unlawfully supplying child abuse images and 11 representative charges of possessing such images. He was remanded by Judge Christopher Harding to appear on March 16 for sentence.
Awakeri School board of trustees chairman Neil Mower wrote to Mr Hawkins to ask how a person under investigation for these kinds of crimes could be allowed to drive a school bus.
The owner of the Kawerau Coaches bus company the school contracted to provide bus services for its pupils had no idea of Eyre's background until he read a report of the court case.
The man was fired and the bus company owner contacted the school to notify the principal of what had happened, Mr Mower said in the letter.
