A PONTYPOOL primary school teaching assistant has pleaded guilty to possessing more than 920 indecent images of children, some as young as 18 months old.

Simon Williams, who is aged 39 and lives on Blaendare Road, Pontypool, admitted three charges of possessing indecent images between February 18 and April 10 this year.

The court heard Williams had a total of 929 indecent images of children.

Williams was arrested earlier this year as part of Operation Notarise, a UK-wide police crackdown on indecent images of children which has so far led to the arrests of 51 people in South Wales.

He pleaded guilty to the charges at Cwmbran Magistrates Court this morning.

It was not said in court which school Williams worked at.

The Pontypool man admitted to having downloaded images and videos of child pornography, including 219 category A images, the highest category.

Ruth Hale, of the prosecution, said the seized material included images of children ranging from as young as 18 months old to 12 years old.

Ms Hale told the court a high tech crime unit from the operation, coordinated by the National Crime Agency, removed computer items from his house.

She said: “In a police interview earlier this year Williams described some of the images and he admitted the viewing of those images”.

Magistrate Kenneth Jones told Williams his case will be dealt with in Newport Crown Court on October 24. He is on conditional bail.