A former Eton College teacher has been jailed after sexually abusing students during visits to their rooms at the prestigious boarding school. Matthew Mowbray, 49, also downloaded hundreds of indecent images of children, and superimposed the faces of his students on to the naked bodies of unknown children on his computer. Mowbray visited boys’ rooms late at night on the pretext of discussing schoolwork before touching them for his own “sexual gratification”, his trial at Reading crown court heard. Mowbray, of Locks Heath, near Fareham in Hampshire, pleaded guilty to six counts of making indecent images of children and one count of voyeurism in relation to a series of covertly filmed images showing a boy getting dressed at the school. But he denied nine counts of sexual activity with a child against four boys and one girl over a period of several years. Mowbray was found guilty last month on eight of the charges and not guilty of one count of sexual activity with a child against a girl. On Thursday he was jailed for a total of five years for the 15 offences. The judge Heather Norton QC said: “You knew that what you were doing was wrong but you continued to take the opportunities afforded to you to abuse children for your own gratification.” She said Mowbray, in his position at Eton, had “ready access to teenage boys who relied upon you, looked up to you and trusted you”. She added: “In what was the grossest breach of trust, over a period of years and in respect of a number of children, you breached their trust, the trust of the families who placed their children in your care, and the trust of the school who had appointed you.” The judge said Mowbray’s actions had “brought discomfort and confusion at the time” to the victims, and had lasting effects as they grew up, including depression, anxiety, stress, and physical and psychological distress. She said the nature of his actions, which she acknowledged were at “the bottom of the scale for this type of offending”, had allowed him to “get away with it for so long”. She added: “Had you committed a more overt sexual act, it is far more likely that a child would have reported it. As it was, they thought it was weird, odd, unusual, uncomfortable – but not such that they would risk their school career by reporting the person who had so much influence over their lives.” The judge paid tribute to the courage of those who gave evidence, and she made special mention of one boy who she said had raised the alarm due to concerns for a friend. The defence counsel Sallie Bennett-Jenkins QC said Mowbray accepted that his actions were “a gross breach of trust” and he had expressed a “deep and genuine sense of remorse and regret”. The judge also made a 10-year sexual harm prevention order.