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Convicted criminal Alex Woolf was formerly employed as a supervisor in a Cambridge college

Woolf’s crimes were not yet known at the time


CN: Sexual misconduct and reference to pornographic sites

A former Cambridge student who was convicted for uploading stolen images of women to porn sites, was employed as a supervisor at one of the Cambridge colleges, The Cambridge Tab can now reveal.

A spokesperson for Cambridge University told The Tab that while the University can find no evidence that Woolf was employed in a teaching capacity at any stage by the University, it has come to light that he was employed on a temporary basis at one of the colleges.

As the Cambridge colleges are separate legal and financial entities to the central University body, colleges employ their own staff.

“The college strongly supports the university’s stance on harassment and sexual misconduct and is in the process of contacting those students to offer support and to ensure that they have not been affected,” the spokesperson said.

Supervisors provide subject-specific advice to postgraduate and undergraduate students, usually in the form of weekly meetings. The college where he worked cannot be disclosed as this would risk revealing the identities of the victims.

The Tab can further reveal that Woolf also taught at the Junior Academy of the Royal Academy, London which offers a musical education for 12-18 year olds. A spokesperson from the Junior Academy said: “Alexander Woolf has taught in the past as an infrequent deputy at Junior Academy, but has never been a contracted member of staff. He will not be working for us in future.”

Woolf was convicted at Thames Magistrates’ Court last week (August 16) for 15 counts of sending messages that were grossly offensive, indecent, obscene or menacing.

He downloaded pictures of clothed victims from social media and uploaded them to Reddit, asking people to paste their faces onto porn actresses’ bodies. His victims were all people known to him, and some were former students at Cambridge University.

Upon hearing that the University has confirmed the news that Woolf was an employed supervisor, one of the victims told The Cambridge Tab: “That it was a man in a position of responsibility at a world renowned institution, who has been given every privilege in life, is not an aberration but in fact typical of such a position.

“And that the institution that once was so supportive, has now tried to deny professional involvement with him shows that Woolf is a product of the very system that is still protecting him.

“A key question we need to consider is how this can be mitigated… why is this happening? Why was the judicial system in his favour? What does that tell us about the society in which we live?”

After studying music at St John’s College, Woolf maintained an active presence in the music life of Cambridge University as a composer and freelancer – although he was never employed as such by his former college.

A spokesperson for St John’s College, Cambridge said: “Woolf was an undergraduate at St John’s and after he graduated, he participated in the musical life of the College, Cambridge, and beyond.”

They added that: “St John’s College has been extremely shocked to learn about Alexander Woolf’s appalling crimes against women.”

“Harassment and sexual misconduct is not tolerated at St John’s,” the spokesperson continued. “We encourage any victims of such behaviour to report it, using the University’s dedicated Office of Student Conduct, Complaints and Appeals and the pastoral system in College for advice and support.”

Alongside a 20-week suspended prison sentence, Woolf has been ordered to delete all of the victims’ images from his devices and was given an indefinite restraining order prohibiting contact with the women.

Woolf is also required to undertake a 40-day rehabilitation programme, to do 40 sessions with a sex offender programme and 180 hours of unpaid work. He must pay each of his victims £100 in compensation, as well as £85 in court costs and a £128 victim surcharge.

Feature images credits: Sophie Carlin

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