A teacher working with vulnerable children was the victim of a sting when he arranged to meet a 15-year-old boy for sex through a gay dating website, a court heard.

James Hope made obscene suggestions about what he wanted to do when they met up.

The 39-year-old, of St Mary’s Road, Faversham, did not hide the fact that he worked for Kent County Council.

Hope, who was responsible for schooling youngsters in care, was led into a trap by the vigilante paedophile group The Hunted One, who set up a fake identify on the gay dating site Grindr.

He was confronted and filmed at Faversham train station on the evening of September 11 last year. The film was then posted online.

It showed him being questioned about a message he sent to the boy known as Sam before police arrived and arrested him.

He told officers he planned to take the boy to his home for sex.

KCC suspended him from his post as assistant head with the Virtual School Kent team based in Swale, Maidstone Crown Court was told.

During his 15-year career in education he had also worked in primary schools and held positions of deputy head teacher and acting head teacher.

He was jailed for 12 months after admitting attempting to meet a child following sexual grooming.

Judge Philip Statman told Hope: “You indicated to him what your sexual desires were and they included acts of penetrative sex.

“You must understand that children must be protected, particularly when they are on websites such as Grindr.

“You knew well fine that in arranging to meet this boy the activity you were to engage in was an act which was unlawful and you undoubtedly acted for reasons of pursuing your own sexual gratification.”

Video: James Hope as he was confronted by The Hunted One

The judge said despite Hope’s good character and the profound impact and subsequent public hounding, he could not impose a suspended sentence.

“You were a teacher and teaching is a calling,” he said. “It is an honourable profession and as a result of your offence you will never teach in all likelihood again.

“You have been humiliated in public and, in what I consider to be a particularly mitigating factor, you have been hounded out of your home by reason of the coverage on the internet of your activity.”

Hope’s name will appear on the sex offenders’ register for 10 years and a sexual harm prevention order was made.

He will have to have sex offender treatment and he will be barred from working with children and vulnerable adults.

“You were a teacher and teaching is a calling. It is an honourable profession and as a result of your offence you will never teach in all likelihood again" - Judge Philip Statman

Judge Statman criticised vigilante groups and the public humiliation they cause victims by posting footage online.

Hope’s case, he said, demonstrated the real danger of such investigations.

“It might be thought by some that they are performing some form of protective role for the community,” he said. “Thereafter, one sees here what happens.

“It is for the court to determine the appropriate punishment. Naming and shaming may well be one aspect but here we have over and above that a hounding of an individual which, it seems to me, is to be wholly discouraged.

“In a civilised society it is for the court to be instructed to deal with the case through the CPS and the police and not by vigilantes who take the law into their own hands.”