Colet Court School and St Paul’s: A Collection of Articles from The Times

Since the initial appearance of my first article from 7/3/14 on Alan Doggett (the updated version can be found here), there has been a steady stream of articles, mostly from Andrew Norfolk at The Times, revealing a wider range of revelations from both Colet Court and St Paul’s Schools, leading to the initiation of Operation Winthorpe, headed by Detective Inspector David Gray, who had formerly run Operation Yewtree, into celebrities in the entertainment industry. As Norfolk’s articles are not generally available for all to view online, I am reproducing all the relevant pieces here. See also Benjamin Ross’s account of life at Colet Court.

130 private schools in child abuse scandal (20.01.14)

The Times, 20th January 2014

by Andrew Norfolk

Teachers at 130 independent schools have been implicated in sex crimes against hundreds of children, an analysis by The Times reveals today. Experts warn of a looming scandal over the abuse of boys in boarding schools during the past half century.

The list features dozens of Britain’s leading public schools well as 20 elite prep schools that regularly send children to Eton College. Included are 64 mainstream private-sector establishments, most of them boarding schools, where at least one male teacher has been convicted of sexually abusing boys, and a further 30 at which a member of staff was sentenced for possessing child abuse mages.

Analysis of past crimes, scandals and police investigations at 130 schools reveals a significant surge in criminal prosecutions since 2012, often for offences that happened many years ago. Should the pattern continue, it is likely to damage schools’ reputations and finances. With annual boarding fees averaging £27,000, many are increasingly reliant on income from the 25,400 foreign pupils who occupy more than a third of boarding school beds.

Across the UK, about 6.5 per cent of schoolchildren are educated in the independent sector. Fifty of the 253 independent schools that make up the Headmasters and Headmistresses’ Conference (HMC), Britain’s private-sector elite, have been connected with child abuse.

One specialist linked the significant growth in complaints to an increasing national awareness of the lasting damage caused by such crimes. Britain’s middle classes had belatedly decided that it is “socially respectable” to discuss childhood abuse, it was claimed while the head of a victims’ campaign group suggested that traditional male “stiff upper lip” attempts to shrug aside sexual trauma were increasingly viewed as outdated.

In the past 20 years, one or more men who taught at 62 independent schools, including Haberdashers’ Aske’s, Ampleforth, Wellington College, King Edward’s School Birmingham and The Oratory School, Reading, have been convicted of sex crimes – from indecent assault to gross indecency and buggery – against 277 male pupils.

Prosecutions involving 18 of those 62 schools came to court in the past two years. Former teachers from a further four independent schools have been charged and are awaiting trial.

Eton, Marlborough, Millfield, Oundle and Tonbridge are among 30 other schools where a male teacher has been convicted of possessing child abuse images. Downside School, Somerset, features in both categories.

Another 36 private-sector schools have been linked to child abuse. They include as yet unresolved prosecutions, civil actions for damages following an alleged abuser’s death, teachers convicted of abusing boys unconnected to their school, and police investigations that led to arrests but no charges.

In this category are Harrow, Sedbergh and Durham schools, all raided in the late 1990s during a nationwide investigation into an alleged paedophile network of teachers at six leading public schools. A teacher at each school was questioned and material including photographs, videos, letters and computer equipment was seized. No one was prosecuted due to lack of evidence.

In several cases that led to convictions, it later emerged that independent schools sought to protect their reputation by covering up potential scandals, allowing teachers to move to other schools where their crimes continued.

In a few cases, schools where teachers abused boys cannot be named, even years later, because court orders prohibit their identification. They include two leading London public schools.

Keir Starmer, QC, until last year the Director of Public Prosecutions, said that the list would strengthen the case for a mandatory requirement that schools to report all suspected abuse. The move is being resisted by the Government.

Mr Starmer said: “During the past 18 months we spread the message that those who report such crimes will be listened to by police and prosecutors. I sense that people today feel they will be taken more seriously.”

Peter Saunders, chief executive of the National Association for People Abused in Childhood (NAPAC), said the organisation has received “many dozens” of calls from former public schoolboys “who have finally acknowledged what happened to them and want to do something about it”.

“There’s a particular vulnerability in boys’ boarding schools. Boys find it more difficult than girls to talk about their feelings. They’re brainwashed into believing that boys don’t cry. A barrier goes up but finally, in some cases 10 or 20 years after they left school, it seems to be coming down.”

Richard Scorer, a partner at Pannone Solicitors, which specialises in child abuse cases and currently represents former pupils of “at least 20″ independent schools, said the Jimmy Savile scandal “has made talking about childhood abuse more socially respectable. That’s particularly true for the middle classes.”

The Independent Schools Council (ISC), whose 1,223 schools, including HMC schools, educate 80 per cent of Britain’s private-sector pupils, said the “abuse of trust by a small number of predatory individuals” in its schools was “a matter of the very deepest regret”. A spokesman said: “While these cases are largely historic, this does not in any way lessen the anguish felt by the innocent victims.”

Parents tell of tragedies after private school child abuse; Scandal may be ‘Just tip of the iceberg’ (21.1.14) (also printed as Teacher’s letter that told abuse victim he had ‘worn out’ video of the attack)

The Times, 21st January 2014

By Andrew Norfolk and Rosemary Bennett

The teachers at 130 independent schools named by The Times as having links to child abuse represent merely “the tip of a very large iceberg”, it was claimed last night.

Dozens of readers contacted the newspaper yesterday to speak from personal experience of sex crimes committed against boys in boarding schools as long ago as the 1950s.

Their accounts, some harrowing, included details of abuse said to have taken place in 23 schools, including 17 that did not feature in yesterday’s list. Some expressed astonishment that no teacher at their former school had yet been convicted. In two separate cases, the parents of boys who each committed suicide in their 20s said that their sons had been damaged beyond repair by events that took place at a Home Counties prep school and a leading English public school.

One of those children was abused during the 1980s by his prep school cricket coach, who was later jailed for sex offences against children at another school. His crimes included making indecent videos of his victims.

The boy’s mother said that her son had never felt able to discuss what happened to him when he was at school. After his death, she found three private letters written to the child by his abuser, one of which made reference to “that video”, which the coach described as having worn out through being watched so many times.

“During the period when he was being abused, my son’s behaviour changed dramatically from that of a happy, outgoing child to that of a depressed, fearful individual,” his mother wrote. “Thank goodness our attitude is changing and more is understood about how devastating this sort of abuse can be. Maybe if we knew then what we know now, my son would still be alive.”

The list published by The Times this week identified 64 mainstream British private sector schools at which teachers have been convicted of sexual offences against boys, with prosecutions involving 18 of the schools being brought to court in the past two years.

At an additional 30 schools, including Eton, Marlborough, Millfield, Oundle and Tonbridge, teachers were found guilty of possessing child-abuse images. A further 36 schools had links to child abuse, including those where teachers are awaiting trial or have been convicted of crimes against boys who were not pupils at the school.

One school unintentionally omitted from the list was St Martin’s prep school in Northwood, London, a former teacher of which was jailed for five years in 2010. Michael Cole, who taught at the boys’ school from 1988 to 1991, was convicted of five charges of indecent assault on pupils during “health checks” when children were ordered to strip then abused. He separately admitted possessing indecent images of children.

One Times reader, a pupil at a public school in southwest England during the late 1950s and early 1960s, provided a detailed account of serial abuse committed against boys by their housemaster and the school’s chaplain. He said that the schools named yesterday, which did not include his former school, were merely “the tip of a huge iceberg, some of which will remain hidden forever”.

The man said that as a child he complained of the sexual abuse to his father and was told not to be “silly”.

In several cases that resulted in prosecutions many years later, scandals were covered up to protect a school’s reputation. Teachers were quietly required to resign and went on to abuse boys at other schools. Such examples, say child-protection campaigners, strengthen the case for the introduction of a mandatory reporting requirement that would force schools to report any suspected case of child abuse.

The scandal of child abuse at elite schools; Letters to the Editor (22.1.14)

The Times, 22nd January 2014

Sir, This disclosure of abuse in schools is welcome, for boarding schools are very “closed worlds” and children as young as 7 are still being sent into the care of strangers solely because it is “the done thing”. Abusers can find it easy to groom children who are very lonely and vulnerable as they move into the strange life of an institution.

Paedophiles often blame the children. Of course they can be condemned whatever their age, as all abusers have always known the damage they cause. This is why they work in a dark world of secrecy, lies or threats to silence their victims.

Andrew Norfolk (report, Jan 20) is absolutely right in saying that no one can be confident that abuse does not exist today. Two things would help reduce the risk.

Firstly, schools need to be truly open and honest about the nature of abuse instead of repeating that it is a thing of the past and all boarding is now safe. It is not, and some in authority collude in the abuse as they silently let known paedophile teachers move to other schools without telling the police.

Secondly, the government has to take this issue seriously. There is no such thing as “mild paedophilia”. Urgent action is needed to change the law, making it mandatory to report all abuse.
Margaret Laughton, Boarding Concern

Sir, Your report on child abuse raises important issues, and no one involved in education would wish to ignore, still less condone past incidents. However, it does seem spiteful to put on an interactive map schools where teachers were acquitted, or where no case was found to answer. A zealous attitude of “no smoke without fire” risks undermining trust in such reports. Not all those accused of a crime are guilty.
Chris Ramsey, Headmaster, The King’s School Chester

Sir, You imply that schools are to blame if the abuse does not lead to prosecution for many years. I’ve twice taught in schools where such a case occurred. In both the school acted promptly when the abuse came to light. In neither was there enough evidence for prosecution though both tried to have the perpetrator included on the sex offenders list. One attempt failed for want of evidence, though the headmaster took the risk, when later he learnt that the man was applying to another school, of warning its head. Schools are natural targets for paedophiles, boarding schools offer more opportunities and victims often can’t speak about the abuse for years. For most of your 130 you list only one offender. In how many of those cases do the victims blame the school?
Tom Mcintyre, Frome, Somerset

Sir, All criminal acts within schools are deplorable. Modern communications do indeed render children less vulnerable to such abuse (letter, Jan 21). Far more significantly, however, extensive legal, regulatory and educational safeguards are now required, including rigorous inspection.

The events of the past cannot, alas, be undone, but the concerns and actions of the present will continue to ensure ever safer and more rewarding educational experiences in the UK schools of the future.
Dr Tim Hands, Chairman, Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference

Teachers ‘abused boys at Osborne’s old school’ (25.03.14)

The Times, 25th March 2014

by Andrew Norfolk

At least six teachers at one of Britain’s most famous and successful public schools are suspected of sexually abusing boys as young as 10 over two decades.

The schoolmasters, all of whom taught at St Paul’s School or its junior division, Colet Court, are implicated in numerous alleged sexual assaults against pupils between the 1960s and the 1980s, an investigation by The Times has established.

One, a close friend of Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber, became a member of the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE), the pro-paedophilia pressure group that has been linked to senior Labour Party figures.

Alan Doggett, director of music at Colet Court, was allowed to resign after suspected serial abuse of a young pupil was exposed. He went on to teach at another leading institution, the City of London School, and became director of an acclaimed boys’ choir. He later committed suicide after being charged with indecently assaulting another boy.

An ex-pupil yesterday accused St Paul’s of exposing hundreds of boys to the risk of abuse by “hushing up” the offending that led to the teacher’s departure.

Dominic Grieve, QC, the Attorney General, was a Colet Court pupil when Doggett was asked to leave.

George Osborne, the Chancellor, also attended the prep school, which shares a 45-acre campus with St Paul’s in Barnes, southwest London. He attended the senior school in the 1980s. There is no suggestion that either was abused as a schoolboy.

On at least two more occasions in the 1960s and 1970s, St Paul’s is understood to have failed to contact police when concerns about masters’ inappropriate sexual conduct towards boys were raised by parents or members of staff. Former teachers at St Paul’s have been the subject of at least four child abuse investigations since the late 1970s. None was initiated by the school.

The most recent criminal case began last month into sexual offences allegedly committed by Patrick Marshall, 65, who taught geography and coached rowing at St Paul’s. He was arrested four weeks ago over the suspected abuse of a boy, aged 15, in the late 1970s. Police hope to speak to more ex-pupils as the inquiry continues.

Mr Marshall, who denies wrongdoing, has been released on bail. Police have previously investigated an unnamed St Paul’s teacher alleged to have abused a pupil in the 1980s. The suspect was arrested in 2000 and a file sent to the Crown Prosecution Service, which ruled there was insufficient evidence to bring charges.

Another inquiry was held in 2000 into a Colet Court teacher, Paul Topham, said to have committed offences against a boy in the late 1960s. He also was not prosecuted, and died in 2012 aged 80.

A former housemaster at the prep school, known as “Alex” Alexander, is today accused by a former pupil of serial indecent assaults during the same decade.

A sixth, unidentified teacher agreed to leave St Paul’s after a school cleaner found sado-masochistic pornography in his room, alongside a personal register of pupils subjected to private spanking sessions. Parents were told that he left for “family reasons”.

A seventh teacher, 70-year-old Keith Perry, St Paul’s “inspirational” former head of history, received a two-year suspended prison sentence last month after collecting hundreds of extreme images of naked boys.

The school at which he taught for 38 years was not named at Southwark Crown Court, where he admitted 17 offences of making and distributing child abuse images “over a substantial period of time”. In internet chat rooms, he wrote of being “obsessed” with boys as young as 8. It is not suggested that any of Perry’s crimes involved pupils at St Paul’s.

In a statement, St Paul’s stressed that none of the alleged abuse concerned staff or pupils currently at the school. It added that three of the alleged offenders were dead but called for living suspects to be “investigated and subjected to the proper processes of justice”.

“Any sexual abuse of children by an adult, and particularly by a teacher, is abhorrent, a serious violation of trust and an affront to the value of any caring community. The school deals quickly, sensitively and resolutely with any concerns or allegations of abuse. This commitment applies equally to allegations of historic abuse. Pupil welfare and safeguarding are our highest priority.”

Professor Mark Bailey, the school’s High Master, said he was “grateful to The Times for bringing these allegations to our attention”. He promised that St paul’s would co-operate fully with any investigation.

‘The teacher sat us on his lap until his face went very red’ (25.03.14)

The Times, 25th March 2014

by Andrew Norfolk

Alan Doggett, Colet Court’s director of music, was forced to resign from the school. There is no suggestion that any of the boys in the picture were abused

By the age of 12, Luke Redmond had been sexually assaulted by three men. All were teachers at a prestigious school paid handsomely by his parents to give their son the best possible start in life.

One was a “gifted colleague” of the West End giants Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber; another became an Anglican clergyman. The third sat boys on his lap until he went “very red in the face”. Such were the hazards of 1960s life in an English preparatory school.

Last year The Times revealed that five teachers at another prep school, Caldicott, in Buckinghamshire, abused more than 30 boys over two decades. Caldicott was among 130 British independent schools, later identified by this newspaper, where staff had been linked to sex crimes involving boys. Teachers at 64 of them were convicted of sexual offences against male pupils.

Luke was outraged that his school was not on the list. He was not the only former pupil of St Paul’s and its prep school, Colet Court, to contact The Times to set the record straight.

Now 59, married and with adult children, he had set out to build a life that wasn’t defined by what happened to him at school. For years he blocked out all recollection of childhood abuse, but psychological wounds festered and 14 years ago the dam burst. Memories erupted and with them came a desire for justice. Luke contacted the police.

By 2000 only one of his three abusers was still alive. Paul Topham was by now an Anglican priest. In a police interview, Luke described lying in his dormitory bed on evenings when Topham was duty master. As dorm monitor, Luke’s bed was closest to the door and the light switch. Topham invariably entered the room, switched off the lights and then sat on Luke’s bed. In the dark, his hand reached under the boy’s bedclothes.

The child lay frozen with shame and confusion. He told no one, nor was there any discussion among the boys of Topham’s far more public assaults when Colet Court boarders were sent at weekends to use the senior school swimming pool. Swimming naked was compulsory. “If Topham was supervising, he’d be in the water in his turquoise shorts. If you rested against the side of the pool, he’d swim up from behind and rub himself against you.”

His abuser set out to befriend Luke’s parents. During school holidays he would often “pop by for a sherry”. Luke said: “He tainted the only safe place I had.”

The officer investigating his complaint of abuse told Luke that Topham was questioned under caution in 2000. He denied every allegation. No charges were brought. He died in 2012.

It was already too late to hold a second abuser to account: Luke’s former housemaster, known as “Alex” Alexander, was dead. Naughty boys were summoned to his study for a beating, then asked to select the weapon — a slipper, hairbrush or plimsoll. Boys pulled down their pyjamas, then bent over a chair. Afterwards, the housemaster would sit the miscreant on his lap, give him toffees as a treat, then shower the child with physical affection. “At the time, I didn’t realise what was happening. I just remember being cuddled and feeling puzzled because he’d always end up going very red in the face.”

Luke’s abuse by Alan Doggett, Colet Court’s director of music, was a once-only indecent assault during the boy’s compulsory audition for the choir.

A far worse fate awaited another boy in his dormitory, a year younger than Luke, who was angelic in both voice and looks. He was Doggett’s chosen one, summoned far too often from their dormitory to spend long hours at night in the choirmaster’s bedroom.

A year later, another boy cried foul and Doggett was forced to resign, though his crimes are understood to have gone unreported by St Paul’s. As a result, it was a decade before he finally appeared in court, charged with offences against a ten-year-old choirboy, born in the year the teacher left Colet Court.

Twice, in 2000 and earlier this year, Luke contacted St Paul’s to ask if it had support mechanisms for victims of historical abuse at the school. Each time, he says, he was told there was no such provision, though St Paul’s last week suggested a meeting to discuss how he might be helped to achieve “closure”.

The former pupil’s name has been changed to protect his identity.

Friends to stars had easy access to boys (25.03.14)

The Times, 25th March 2014

by Andrew Norfolk

Colet Court building in West London

Many hundreds would be a modest estimate of the number of young boys with whom Alan Doggett was allowed close contact after his suspected abuse of a pupil came to the attention of St Paul’s School.

Quietly removed from his post at Colet Court, the future member of the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE) went on to teach boys at a second independent school before working as a choirmaster with boys from more than 30 London schools.

A decade after his departure from Colet Court, the 41-year-old threw himself in front of a train a few hours after appearing in court, accused of twice indecently assaulting a child aged 10. Doggett’s bail conditions barred any further contact with his choirboys.

In the 17 years preceding his 1978 suicide, he worked almost daily with pre-adolescent boys. He was a gifted but weak man, surrounded by temptation.

Doggett was a former pupil of Colet Court and St Paul’s who returned to the prep school as director of music from 1963 to 1968, having previously taught the cellist Julian Lloyd Webber at Westminster Under School, the junior division of Westminster School.

A regular guest at the Lloyd Webber household, he became friendly with Julian’s elder brother, Andrew, and in the summer of 1967 invited the fledgeling Tim Rice-Lloyd Webber songwriting partnership to pen a pop cantata for an end-of-term school concert.

Rice was then 22, Lloyd Webber 19, and from that invitation Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat was born. Its first performance was in March 1968 at Colet Court. Four months later, Doggett conducted the first recording of Joseph, at EMI’s Abbey Road, again featuring boys in the prep school choir.

Allegations of sexual misconduct with a pupil led to his dismissal in the same year but by 1969 he was again teaching music to boys, this time at the City of London School.

Doggett’s association with Rice and Lloyd Webber continued until 1976. He was principal conductor on the original recording of Jesus Christ Superstar and directed the London Boy Singers — a choir whose first president was Benjamin Britten — in his role as “musical co-ordinator” for the first Evita album. As the choir’s reputation grew, he took his boys on European tours. They performed for the Pope, appeared on radio and television, recorded albums and performed in films. Doggett’s death came 15 days before he was due to conduct a massed choir of 1,000 schoolboys — all personally selected and coached — at the Royal Albert Hall. Police had been planning to interview every boy.

A farewell letter explained that in life he had chosen “the way of the Greek”, which “though hard is best”. Days later, Rice and Lloyd Webber issued a joint statement: “Alan was a music and singing teacher of extraordinary talent. We have lost a gifted colleague and a dear friend.”

Rice spoke at the funeral. In his 1999 autobiography, he wrote: “I cannot believe that Alan was truly a danger, or even a minor menace, to the many boys he worked with over the years. It has been known for young boys . . . to manufacture or exaggerate incidents when they know and disapprove of a teacher’s inclinations.”

Lloyd Webber was said by a biographer to remain convinced that “Doggett would never have been guilty of taking advantage of any young person in his charge”.

After his death, an edition of Magpie, the newsletter for the PIE pressure group that campaigned on behalf of paedophiles, revealed that a requiem Mass was said for Doggett by a Catholic priest, Michael Ingram, at a church in Leicester. Twenty-four years later, in 2002, Ingram was convicted of multiple sex offences between 1970 and 1978 against six boys aged from 9 to 12.

PIE’s treasurer, Paul Andrews, wrote that Doggett killed himself after being “accused of indecency with a 10-year-old boy”, adding that he could “well imagine the innocence with which this act of love and affection had taken place”.

Ian Pace, a professional pianist, City University lecturer and campaigner against abuse in musical education, last night demanded a “proper investigation” of Doggett’s continued access to boys after his offending was first exposed at the prep school. “It is rare for such abusers to have merely a few isolated victims,” he said. “The potential implications of this are alarming.”

Boys punished for telling of abuse by teacher (28.3.14)

The Times, 28th March 2014

By Andrew Norfolk

The headmaster of an elite preparatory school punished two pupils for their “wickedness” in reporting serial sexual abuse by a paedophile schoolmaster.

Both were given detention after complaining of indecent assaults regularly committed against boarders at Colet Court, the junior division of St Paul’s School, by its director of music, Alan Doggett.

Doggett, a close friend of Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber, later became a member of Paedophile Information Exchange, which campaigned in the 1970s to lower the age of consent to 4. Doggett committed suicide when he was charged with sex crimes against another boy, ten years after leaving the prep school.

Many former pupils of Colet Court and St Paul’s, which share a campus in Barnes, southwest London, contacted The Times this week after it was revealed that at least six former teachers, including Doggett, were implicated in numerous sex crimes from the 1960s to the 1980s.

One suspect, Patrick Marshall, 65, who taught at St Paul’s in the late 1970s, was arrested last month and has been bailed pending further police inquiries. He denies any wrongdoing.

Several ex-pupils described Doggett’s routine “fondling” of boys in their beds. Three said they were abused by the choirmaster, who was conductor on the first recordings of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita. Doggett resigned after his abuse was exposed in 1968, but it is understood that St Paul’s did not report the allegations to police or to education officials, which was required by law.

He went on to teach at City of London School and became director of an acclaimed choir before killing himself in 1978.

Stephen (his surname is withheld), the pupil who ended Doggett’s Colet Court career, said that he and a friend decided to speak to the school’s headmaster, Henry Collis, after Doggett indecently assaulted both 11-year-olds as they sat on each side of him during a televised football match in May 1968.

“It was the Manchester United v Benfica European Cup Final. We were sitting on the floor and Doggett’s hands were groping inside our pyjama bottoms.

“He wouldn’t leave us alone. He’d already had a go at me in the dormitory on quite a few occasions,” Stephen said. After the match, the two pupils decided that “he’s got to be stopped”. They informed Mr Collis, who was headmaster of Colet Court from 1957 to 1973 and served as chairman of the Independent Preparatory Schools Association.

Stephen said: “When I next went home on exeat that weekend, the school had telephoned my father to complain that I’d made up terrible stories about Doggett. Dad asked me what had been going on. When I told him, he said he believed me and I’d done the right thing in speaking out, but when I got back to the school the two of us were summoned to Mr Collis’s study.

“I can still see us standing in front of his desk on the Monday morning.He was furious. He said we were wicked for making up such awful lies. Mr Doggett was so appalled and embarrassed by the disgraceful things we’d said that he’d decided to leave the school. We should be thoroughly ashamed of ourselves. He gave us detention.”

Stephen said that another boy in their year suffered far worse crimes at Doggett’s hands: “He had one particular favourite who received regular visits in the dormitory at night. He’d abuse the poor boy without seeming to care that we could all see and watch what was happening.”

Other ex-pupils spoke this week of open gossip among the boys that “half a crown” was the “going rate for a session with Doggett”. One said that his year group even coined a new verb: to be “Doggoed” was to be groped and fondled.

Doggett’s resignation was one of several occasions when St Paul’s allegedly failed to inform police after concerns were raised about sexual misconduct by teachers. Three ex-pupils named Stephen Hale, who taught at Bedford School before joining St Paul’s in the mid-1980s, as the unidentified teacher who was forced to resign after sado-masochistic pornography and a spanking register were found in his room by a school cleaner. The incident was reported in this newspaper on Tuesday.

Inquiries have established that Mr Hale, a maths teacher and boardinghouse tutor, left the school in June 1987, a day after the discovery. St Paul’s merely told the Department for Education that Mr Hale agreed to resign after breaking its rules on corporal punishment. No suggestion was made of any sexual impropriety. As a result, he was not placed on the national list of teachers barred from working with children. His whereabouts are unknown In a statement earlier this week, St Paul’s described all child abuse as abhorrent and stressed that its current arrangements for pupil safeguarding and welfare are rated as excellent by the Independent Schools Inspectorate.

The school has pledged full co-operation with any investigation into past crimes allegedly committed by teachers who are still alive.

Police look into ‘decades of abuse’ at top school; Teacher arrested as police look into ‘decades of abuse’ at school (9.4.14)

The Times, April 9th 2014

By Andrew Norfolk

Police have begun a criminal inquiry into decades of alleged sexual abuse at a top boys’ public school, as it emerged that a current teacher was arrested just six months ago for possessing indecent images of children.

The inquiry into St Paul’s School in London, and its prep school, Colet Court, come after revelations in The Times last month that prompted former pupils to contact police.

So many complaints have been made during the past fortnight that officers are investigating more than six “persons of interest” who taught at the school, whose alumni include George Osborne, the Chancellor.

The officer leading the inquiry said that it had spiralled rapidly into “a complex investigation with further victims, witnesses and suspects being identified on an almost daily basis”.

Detective Inspector Jon Rhodes also appealed for more witnesses to “come forward if they have information”.

The Metropolitan Police said in a statement: “We can confirm that the child abuse investigation team is investigating historic allegations of sexual abuse alleged to have taken place between the 1960s and 1980s. We are aware of a number of potential victims and witnesses we wish to speak to over the course of the investigation.”

It can be revealed that Colet Court’s director of administration, a classics teacher at the preparatory school for more than 20 years, resigned during the current academic year after his arrest on suspicion of possessing child abuse images.

Anthony Fuggle, 57, has been questioned and released on bail. Police were alerted in September after photographs of boys and “inappropriate written material” were found on a school computer during routine IT checks.

A file on the case is with the Crown Prosecution Service. Mr Fuggle was unavailable for comment.

A meeting was held on Friday between police and the school’s current leadership team, at which St Paul’s pledged its full co-operation to the inquiry and its belief that any former employee guilty of child-sex offences should face justice. Letters and e-mails Continued on page 8, col 3 Continued from page 1 were sent last week to parents of boys at St Paul’s and Colet Court and also to former pupils who are members of the Old Pauline Club.

Two weeks ago, this newspaper revealed that six former teachers at St Paul’s and its prep school, which share a campus in Barnes, southwest London, were suspected of sexually assaulting boys from the mid 1960s to the late 1980s.

Students in that era included Mr Osborne, who was at Colet Court and St Paul’s in the 1980s, and Dominic Grieve, QC, the Attorney-General, a pupil at the prep school in the 1960s. There is no suggestion that either was abused as a schoolboy.

Former pupils subsequently contacted this newspaper to accuse more ex-members of staff of sexual misconduct. In total, abuse allegations have been made to The Times against 13 schoolmasters, five of whom taught at St Paul’s and eight at Colet Court. Six of the men are known or thought to be dead.

Offences are said to have been committed against pupils aged 9 to 17, ranging from indecent assaults, voyeurism and sexually motivated beatings to boys being groomed by a teacher who later paid them for penetrative sex.

In two of the 13 cases, at least five ex-pupils have separately made allegations against the same teacher. Former pupils initially came forward in January after St Paul’s was not named in a news article listing 130 British independent schools linked to the abuse of hundreds of boys.

A month later, police began a criminal inquiry into a complaint made by an ex-pupil against a former teacher, Patrick Marshall, alleging sexual offences in the late 1970s.

Mr Marshall, 65, who taught geography and coached rowing at St Paul’s, was arrested and released on bail pending further inquiries. He denies wrongdoing.

Liz Dux, a lawyer specialising in abuse cases, said that no independent school of St Paul’s status and academic reputation had faced such wide-ranging allegations.

Her firm, Slater & Gordon, whose clients include more than 140 alleged victims of Jimmy Savile, represents an ex-pupil who claims to have been sexually abused at St Paul’s in the 1970s.

Ms Dux said that it was “already clear that some of these complaints were known about by other members of staff at the time”. She voiced concern about the adequacy of the school’s response when allegations were brought to its attention during the years that are under police investigation.

The school said yesterday that it was working with the police to ensure that any former teachers who failed in their “heavy duty of responsibility for the well-being of pupils” were held accountable, whether for offences “50 years ago or more recently”.

A spokesman said: “We have direct access to the investigative team, and all allegations of historic abuse which are brought to our attention are forwarded immediately to them.”

Abuse claims against 18 teachers by ex-pupils at top public school; St Paul’s co-operates with police inquiry led by head of Savile investigation (1.5.14)

The Times, May 1st 2014

By Andrew Norfolk

A team of specialist Scotland Yard detectives led by the officer who headed the Jimmy Savile inquiry is to investigate claims that up to 18 paedophile teachers may have abused dozens of boys for several decades at one of Britain’s most famous public schools.

The move comes after a series of complaints from former pupils who say that they fell victim to sex crimes by staff at St Paul’s School, in London, or its preparatory school, Colet Court.

Triggered by revelations in The Times, multiple allegations have been made to police in recent weeks against numerous former schoolmasters, ten of whom taught at Colet Court and eight at St Paul’s. Some are no longer alive.

Detectives have compiled a list of more than 100 victims, suspects and potential witnesses.

Alleged sex offences at the two schools span five decades, from the mid-1960s to last year. A source close to the inquiry, Operation Winthorpe, described its scope as huge.

The new investigation will be under the command of Detective Superintendent David Gray, who led the Metropolitan Police’s Operation Yewtree investigation into the alleged sex crimes of Savile and other celebrities, including Max Clifford.

Mr Gray, head of Scotland Yard’s paedophile unit, said that police intended to carry out “a thorough and transparent review of non-recent offending at the two schools”, which share a campus in Barnes, southwest London.

“The investigation will be conducted by a dedicated team of specially trained officers who have experience of historic child abuse investigations and are sensitive to the needs of victims.” A telephone hotline and email address have been set up, to enable former pupils to contact the inquiry team.

Pat Marshall, 65, a former St Paul’s master, was arrested in February on suspicion of indecently assaulting a pupil in the 1970s. He denies any wrongdoing. His ex-colleague, Keith Perry, 70, received a suspended prison sentence in the same month for possessing hundreds of extreme child abuse images.

A Colet Court teacher, Anthony Fuggle, 57, was arrested last September on suspicion of possessing indecent images of boys, said to have been found on a school computer. He is on bail.

It can be revealed today that a second teacher at the prep school was also arrested last year, on suspicion of sexually grooming a child. Tim Harbord, 61, was not charged with any offence and denies any misconduct. He and Mr Fuggle both resigned during the current academic year.

Crimes, ranging from indecent assaults to penetrative sex, are said to have been committed by 18 teachers against boys aged from 9 to 17, in dormitories, classrooms, a swimming pool, inside a car and at teachers’ private homes. Much of the offending is alleged to have happened between the 1960s and 1990.

Pupils at one or both schools during the era under investigation included the chancellor, George Osborne, the attorney general, Dominic Grieve, QC, and the actor, Eddie Redmayne. There is no suggestion that they were abused as schoolboys.

Detective Sergeant James Townly, who has day-to-day control of Operation Winthorpe, said that former pupils who were the victims of sexual abuse were being placed “at the centre of our work”. Anyone who comes forward will “receive assistance and appropriate support”.

“We’ve already spoken to a number of complainants and there are many other people we need to contact to build a full picture of the alleged offending over several decades. It will obviously take some time for the police to work through all those names.”

St Paul’s, founded in 1509, says that the safeguarding and welfare of pupils is its highest priority.

The school has pledged full co-operation with the investigation and called for all living suspects to be “subjected to the proper processes of justice”, whether for offences 50 years ago or more recently.

Accused teacher kept on working for 24 years

The Times, May 1st 2014

By Andrew Norfolk

A teacher kept his job at a leading school for 24 years after he was accused of fondling a young boy in a classroom, it has been alleged.

Tim Harbord, who taught at Colet Court, the junior division of St Paul’s School, London, finally left at Christmas after a criminal investigation was triggered by a complaint from the parents of a current pupil. They contacted the preparatory school’s headmaster last year to return a jacket sent by the teacher to their son as a present.

Mr Harbord, 61, was arrested and questioned by police in June on suspicion of the sexual grooming of a child. He was not charged with any offence but resigned after receiving a final written warning from the school.

The Times has been told that more than two decades earlier, in 1990, a former Colet Court headmaster failed to take action against the teacher when a mother disclosed her ten-year-old son’s alleged ordeal at his hands. The former pupil, now 34, recently contacted police to add his complaint to a list of allegations against former teachers at St Paul’s or Colet Court.

Mr Harbord, who denies any sexual misconduct, is the second Colet Court master to leave abruptly during the current academic year. Anthony Fuggle, 57, a classics teacher for more than 20 years, resigned in September after being arrested on suspicion of possessing indecent images of children. Photographs of boys were said to have been found on a school computer.

Mr Fuggle remains on bail, pending further police inquiries. Mr Harbord, who coached sport and taught English and history during 28 years at the school, resigned before the start of its spring term in January.

In each case, the current leadership at St Paul’s contacted police and social services when concerns were raised last year. The school allegedly failed to inform child-protection authorities on at least three occasions in the 1960s and 1970s when sexual abuse claims were made against teachers.

The former pupil has told police that on a summer afternoon in 1990, aged ten, he returned to a classroom after lessons to collect a tennis ball and found himself alone with Mr Harbord.

He alleges that the teacher cuddled him before asking him to sit on his lap. He said Mr Harbord began stroking his hair and then his thigh, at which point the child panicked and fled the room.

The ex-pupil said he was so troubled by the incident that he later confided in his sister, swearing her to secrecy. She told their mother, who contacted Billy Howard, the headmaster at the time.

His mother said she gave Mr Howard details of the “totally improper” incident and demanded an assurance “that Mr Harbord was never again going to do anything like that to my son or to anybody else”.

She remembers his response: “He told me that it was very difficult to get male staff in London prep schools who weren’t homosexual. Even at the time, it seemed an extraordinary thing to say. He didn’t propose any action and that seemed to be the end of it as far as he was concerned.” The woman’s son said that until the classroom incident he was very fond of Mr Harbord. “I looked up to him. We all did. He was a ‘cool’ teacher. At the time, people were incredibly naive. What he did to me was brazen but it was completely brushed under the carpet. I’ve never forgotten it.”

Mr Howard’s wife, Heather, told The Times that her husband, 81, “has absolutely no recollection whatsoever” of receiving a complaint of sexual misconduct against Mr Harbord, who was adamant that no such offence took place. Mr Harbord said: “This is so untrue. Nothing happened like this. I’d never sit a boy on my lap in the classroom, stroke his hair. That’s a terrible thing to say.”

He insisted that at no stage of his Colet Court career was he told of any complaint of sexual misconduct against him, but accepted that he had recently been guilty “of naivety” in developing a close relationship with the boy’s family. “I got to know this family well. We did things together, as a family. I shouldn’t have got so close, but nothing sexual went on.”

He said the boy’s mother once sent a card thanking him “for all the affection you’ve shown”, but thought she might have subsequently felt that he was “getting a little bit too close”.

He added: “I was interviewed by the police. They went through all sorts of questions. It was the most despairing time of my life, but then I got a call to say the matter wasn’t going any further.

“There was a formal disciplinary meeting with the headmaster and I had to accept the school policy about gifts and seeing children outside school, and that I mustn’t contact the family. It was very sad because we were very close.”

Mr Harbord said he had no sexual interest in boys. “I’ve always wanted to be married with a family, but I was married to the school.”

In a statement, the school said that Mr Howard, headmaster of Colet Court from 1973 to 1992, “categorically denies any knowledge of the allegations relating to Mr Harbord. He further denies making any remarks about the recruitment of homosexuals to teach in London prep schools.”

Teacher kept job for 16 years after pupils found sex tapes (20.05.14)

The Times, 20th May 2014

By Andrew Norfolk

A paedophile teacher kept his job at a top public school for 16 years after pupils found his collection of indecent videos. Keith Perry taught for 38 years at St Paul’s School, in west London, where a police inquiry began last month into sex crimes allegedly committed against boys by 18 teachers since the 1960s.
Perry was convicted this year after police raided his home last summer and found almost 600 films and photographs showing the abuse of children. In online chat rooms, the “inspirational” former head of history spoke of being sexually obsessed with boys as young as eight.

Perry, 71, who retired in 2003, escaped a jail sentence after it was claimed in court that his addiction to the “utterly repellent” images was a recent lapse by a man of “exemplary character”.

It can be revealed today, however, that Perry’s viewing tastes were discovered in 1986, when boys in a St Paul’s boarding house found a collection of videos hidden behind a row of books in his study, where he often entertained pupils. It was always kept unlocked.

A former pupil told The Times that in Perry’s absence he and a small group of boarders watched an excerpt from one of the films. He said it showed a weeping boy, aged about 13, sitting naked on a chair. The child was instructed to perform a sex act.

Inquiries by The Times confirm the boy’s recollection of having been so disturbed by the video that he reported it to a teacher, who told the school’s senior management of the alleged discovery of “homosexual pornographic videos” in the assistant housemaster’s study.

The teacher said the pupil did not give him a detailed description of the video’s content and the school remained unaware of the allegation that some footage included the abuse of children. No investigation was conducted and no formal disciplinary action was taken against Perry.

It is understood that discussions led to Perry being “quietly advised” to move out of the boarding house, which housed 60 pupils aged from 13 to 18. He taught at St Paul’s for a further 16 years.

Operation Winthorpe, a criminal inquiry led by specialist detectives from the Metropolitan police’s paedophile unit, began work last month after former pupils of St Paul’s and its preparatory school, Colet Court, contacted The Times to allege past sexual abuse by a host of teachers.

Crimes under investigation are said to have taken place between the mid-1960s and last year. It is alleged that on several occasions the school failed to report sexual misconduct by staff. Teachers who were asked to leave found jobs at other boys’ schools.

A former St Paul’s teacher told The Times that the school’s child protection failings in past decades reflected “the rather depressing culture of the day” in many British independent schools. Another said: “In those days, protecting the institution from scandal was all-important.”

Perry admitted last week that he kept pornographic films in his study but denied that any featured children. He also denied being asked to leave the boarding house.
St Paul’s said that it was “co-operating fully with the police investigation”.
The possession of indecent images of children did not become a criminal offence in England and Wales until 1988. The police hotline for Operation Winthorpe is 020-7161 0500.

Colet Court and St Paul’s: a culture of child abuse; Andrew Norfolk on how the closed world of Colet Court and St Paul’s schools made possible decades of abuse against boys (20.5.14)

The Times, May 20th 2014

By Andrew Norfolk

SECTION: LIFE

LENGTH: 1740 words

At the height of the 1960s, when London’s pulse was a planet’s heartbeat, sex had just been invented and blessed were the young for they had inherited the world and all the LSD it contained, a nightly ritual was performed within the walls of a large Victorian building on Hammersmith Road whose values belonged to an older, more monotone land, one in which Britain still ruled an Empire, everyone knew their place and good boys did as they were told.

Here, after lights-out, a middle-aged bachelor schoolmaster descended from his room to deliver a cup of tea to his 14-year-old beloved, a child angelic of looks and voice. The teacher would scan the boys’ dormitory before selecting at random another pupil upon whom fell the task of returning the empty cup and saucer to the master’s room once Ganymede’s thirst was quenched.

This was School House, one of two boarding houses at St Paul’s School, an institution that since 1509 had steadily forged an unchallenged reputation for its ability to mould, from the bright offspring of the capital’s aspirational middle classes, young gentlemen fit for Oxbridge and a glittering future.

Across the road from School House stood Colet Court, the junior division of St Paul’s, where director of music Alan Doggett was also fond of nocturnal dorm visits. Here was no faux romance. The same 11-year-old boy lay back passively each evening as the teacher lifted his bedsheets and set busily to work. Fellow pupils sat quietly in the dark, watching. Everyone knew; no one said a word.

A few miles and a million light years away, Carnaby Street may have been swinging as old roads aged rapidly, yet some pillars of the British establishment held firm. None was more a bastion of tradition than the English public school. It inspired fierce loyalty, worshipped the team ethic and demanded high standards of children from whose parents submissive gratitude was expected at their son’s good fortune in winning admission to the hallowed privilege for which they were paying so handsomely.

Delight was taken in arcane terminology and age-old customs, their purpose long since lost to the mists of time. In classroom, playing field and dormitory, a master’s word was law, sneaking was for plebs and outsiders were viewed with polite but barely concealed contempt. Girls were a foreign country and secrets, even the darkest, were made for keeping. A man could do mischief here; some did.

Attitudes towards child sexual abuse in Britain are a long road slowly travelled. There was a time when no one looked behind a family’s front door; when a Catholic priest’s moral conduct was deemed irreproachable; when children in care were invisible; when what some celebrities did to underage girls was par for the course; when a pro-paedophile group won affiliation to a civil rights organisation while seeking to lower the age of consent to four; when men in the back streets of towns such as Rochdale groomed and sold children for sex while police and social services stood by and shrugged their shoulders.

Conspiracies of silence and complacency were eventually broken, lids lifted, victims given a voice. Eventually, sometimes decades after they plundered childhoods, guilty men were held to account. As each abuse model was exposed, it was asked how such crimes could have run unchecked for so long. In part the answer was chillingly simple: child abuse will flourish when there is an imbalance of power, a setting free from external scrutiny and a culture that plays by its own code. Small surprise, perhaps, that a famous independent school has joined those institutions stung by a long-overdue reckoning for alleged past sins.

There have been public-school scandals in the past, of course, notably those involving England’s three best-known Catholic boarding schools, Ampleforth, Stonyhurst and Downside, and in recent years there has been a steady rise in criminal investigations. In January The Times listed 64 fee-paying boys’ schools at which a male teacher has been convicted of sexually abusing a pupil. The offences dated back to the 1950s, but 62 of the 64 cases were brought to court in the past 20 years, 18 of them since 2012.

The article triggered long-buried memories. Men aged from their thirties to their seventies wrote and phoned in large numbers, seemingly compelled to share their own story. Some spoke of their abuse for the first time; a few broke down. Here were decades of unresolved shame, anger and confusion. Allegations were made against staff at 41 independent schools, of which 26 were not on our original list of 64. There was usually one alleged offender but the case of St Paul’s – two former pupils separately named four teachers – seemed on a different scale.

In March The Times implicated six former teachers at Colet Court or St Paul’s in alleged sex crimes against boys. By then a low-key police investigation was already in progress into a complaint by an ex-pupil against one teacher. The article prompted a surge of calls to the newspaper, the school and the police. Last month, a specialist team of detectives was set up to lead Operation Winthorpe. They have already recorded complaints against 18 former members of staff at the two schools, some no longer alive. The number of victims, suspects – spanning 50 years, from the mid-1960s to last year – and potential witnesses has passed 200.

Handed a list of England’s oldest and most famous public schools, few would have tipped St Paul’s to be the one to face such extensive allegations. A boarding establishment in a remote rural setting more easily fits the profile than a big London school with a rapier-sharp academic reputation and very few boarders.

Yet it was here, along Hammersmith Road until 1968 and since then at the school’s current location in Barnes, southwest London, that a culture is said to have arisen in which some masters, no matter how effective in sculpting young minds for examination success, treated children shamefully. Tales abound until the 1980s of sadistic violence, cruel bullying and of sexual attacks ranging from minor indecent assaults to extended, intimate relationships.

Teachers are accused of offences in dormitories, classrooms, the swimming pool, their own homes, even in cars. There was a period in the late Sixties and early Seventies when, if several former pupils are to be believed, to emerge after five years as a Colet Court boarder without once becoming the means of a teacher’s sexual gratification was to be distinctly fortunate. Some parents were warned that one endured the prep school because the prize was worth it: a place at St Paul’s.

At the senior school, police are examining whether tolerance of adult homosexuality may sometimes have edged dangerously close to turning a blind eye to pederasty. One boy remembers being assured by an avuncular master that homosexuality was a youth cult. In a 1978 suicide note after he was charged with abusing a choirboy, Doggett wrote that he had chosen “the way of the Greek”.

Doggett is one of six Colet Court or St Paul’s teachers who quietly resigned between 1967 and 1987 after suspected sexual misconduct came to light. Not once, it is alleged, did the school call in the police. The late Warwick Hele, high master of the senior school from 1973 to 1986, is remembered by a colleague as “a very good man but not one to stir up trouble unless he had to”. Another described an era when “protecting the institution from scandal was all-important”. For any fee-paying school, gaining a bad reputation could be extremely costly.

That remains the case today, but many outsiders would feel a degree of sympathy for Mark Bailey, St Paul’s highly regarded high master since 2011. His school is suddenly under fire, hit by a blizzard of alleged past misconduct, yet on the two occasions that concerns about teachers are known to have been raised since Bailey has been in post, the school responded swiftly and contacted external child-safeguarding authorities.

Investigations subsequently led to the arrest in 2013 of two long-serving Colet Court teachers, Anthony Fuggle and Tim Harbord, on suspicion of possessing indecent images and of sexual grooming respectively. Each resigned. Harbord has strongly denied any wrongdoing. Neither man has been charged with any criminal offence.

Had such decisive action been taken in response to pre-2011 complaints against teachers, St Paul’s would not be as vulnerable to the damning charge that it formerly seemed less concerned with the protection of children than with the protection of its own good name. The school, which says it is co-operating fully with the police, has described all child abuse as abhorrent and called for anyone guilty of past offences to be held to account. Its current standards of pupil safeguarding and welfare have been rated by inspectors as excellent.

Public reaction to the police inquiry has been instructively varied. Adults whose school years were not spent in similar institutions seem baffled that a world so seemingly careless of child welfare could have existed so recently. Many who were shaped by similar schooling in the same era know only too well that it did; most are nonetheless taken aback by the sheer scale of what is alleged at St Paul’s.

From some ex-public schoolboys, though, comes irritation that such a fuss is being made by chaps who really ought to “man up” and stop making such a hue and cry about a little mild spanking at schools that delivered a first-class education and bred resilience, independence and loyalty into boys who went on to become life’s winners. Some of them now run the country.

Such critics should rewind to the 1970s and a flat near St Paul’s owned by the late Rev Dr Edward Ryan, the school’s under-chaplain and a man who took a close pastoral interest in the vulnerable among his young flock. Boys invited to his home for a chat are said to have been plied with alcohol, then offered cash for penetrative sex. Those who tried to escape sometimes found their way barred.

One of “Doc” Ryan’s junior colleagues, who knew of his regular invitations to pupils but not of any sexual allegations, said he bore all the hallmarks of a predatory paedophile: “I would not have trusted Edward Ryan in the company of a young boy any farther than I could throw him.”

Should Ryan’s victims, some haunted to this day, be expected easily to forgive the school that for so many years gave him such unrestricted access to adolescent boys?

Former Colet Court teacher charged over abuse images (4.6.14)

The Times, June 4th 2014

By Andrew Norfolk

A former teacher at one of England’s most prestigious prep schools is to appear in court accused of possessing child-abuse images.

Anthony Fuggle was a senior classics master at Colet Court, the junior division of St Paul’s School, until he resigned after his arrest last September. Mr Fuggle, 57, who was also the prep school’s director of administration, was charged last night with 11 offences of making indecent images of children and six of possessing indecent images of children. He becomes the first former teacher at St Paul’s or its prep school to be charged under Operation Winthorpe, a criminal inquiry led by a specialist team of Scotland Yard detectives that was launched in April to investigate alleged sexual misconduct involving more than 20 members of staff.

Eighteen ex-teachers, not including Mr Fuggle, have been accused by former pupils of sexually abusing boys at the school over a 50-year period since the mid-1960s. Some are no longer alive. St Paul’s and its junior school share a campus in Barnes, southwest London.

Mr Fuggle was one of two Colet Court teachers to resign during the current academic year. Tim Harbord, 61, left at Christmas after he was arrested on suspicion of sexually grooming a boy. He was released without charge and has strongly denied any wrongdoing.

A former master at St Paul’s, Patrick Marshall, 65, who taught geography and coached rowing, was arrested in February over the suspected abuse of a pupil in the 1970s. He remains on bail.

Mr Fuggle was arrested last autumn after child-protection authorities were contacted by the school. Photographs of young boys were said to have been found during a routine IT check on Colet Court’s computers. He remains on bail and is due to appear before Wimbledon magistrates on June 20.

---