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© Jefferson Siegel for NewsJefferson Siegel for News
John Thomas, who was caught with over 9,000 pieces of kiddie porn, leaves Manhattan Federal Court after being sentenced.
A prep school teacher who downloaded thousands of kiddie porn images pleaded for leniency Monday because he was "no monster" -- but a judge sentenced him to 6½ years in jail.

As his mother and sister looked on, John Thomas, 28, told a Manhattan federal judge he'd never been in trouble and even read a letter one of his grade-school students wrote him.

The judge said he was only fooling himself.

"You were a monster, it's just that you were successful in hiding it," Judge Kevin Duffy said, noting that no parent would let Thomas teach their child if they had known the truth about him.

"Not if they knew about the monster that was at least inside of you, the monster that could break out at any point."

Thomas argued that at least he didn't act out on any of his fourth- and fifth-graders at the elite schools where he worked - Horace Mann, Bank Street School, Friends Seminary and the 92nd Street Y Summer Camp.

The judge scolded him over that argument as well.

"You didn't take it out on a little child," he said. "Those people are totally despicable, but they're more honest than you are."

Investigators traced more than 9,000 pieces of child pornography Thomas had on his computer, downloading many of them from the Internet between September 2007 and May 2010.

"I'm not a monster, I'm not a predator," Thomas said, pleading for a non-jail sentence and noting "all the good I've done for everyone."

"I'm not the kind of person who deliberately hurts others," he said. "I would never physically abuse a child."

Duffy was unmoved, but spared him the maximum of 12 1/2 years in prison.