Paedophile former teacher is jailedforcausing‘irreparable damage’ to his young victims
A PAEDOPHILE former head teacher has been handed a three year sentence after he admitted sexually abusing more victims.
Patrick Carton (77) was jailed at Downpatrick Crown Court yesterday.
Judge Geoffrey Miller QC ordered the pensioner to serve half his sentence in jail and half under supervised licence, but also ordered the sentence to be served alongside the eight and a half year sentence Carton is already serving.
He told Carton — described as a “gifted and talented teacher” at De La Salle in Downpatrick as well as being head of the maths department at St Colman’s in Newry before his retirement — that he had abused his privileged position in society and his church for his own ends.
He told the court while Carton had taught and tutored hundreds of children over his career, he had been selective in which children he chose to punish, an indication said the judge that “speaks of control and desire to humiliate”.
Judge Miller declared: “He is not a victim. He is a perpetrator of sexual abuse on those who suffered and continue to suffer.
“They should feel no shame. There is only one person who should feel shame.
“You have brought irreparable damage to young lives over many years.”
Carton, from Marguerite Close in Newcastle, admitted indecently assaulting two more young girls he had been tutoring between 1984 and 1986 and 2005 and 2007.
The girls are his seventh and eighth victims as, at the end of a seven week trial last year, Carton was convicted on 29 counts of indecent assault against four girls and a boy he had been tutoring between 1984 and 2005.
Opening the facts of the latest case yesterday, prosecuting counsel Laura Ievers recounted how it essentially had the same modus operandi in that Carton told the children of his “star system” when he was teaching and that if they misbehaved or did anything wrong, he would smack their bottoms.
The first victim in this set of offences, said the lawyer, had her bottom smacked in front of two other girls Carton had been tutoring.
Ms Ievers told the court the second victim thought Carton was “joking” when he told her of his teaching methods, adding that on one occasion however, Carton put the girl over his knee and smacked her six or seven times, causing her to flee the rooms in floods of tears.
Both girls gave initial statements not long after the incidents and gave further statements in 2017 and 2018 when they became aware that other victims had come forward.
A defence lawyer submitted that had the charges been dealt with at the original trial, a concurrent sentence might have been imposed.
Jailing Carton, Judge Miller referred to his previous case which the paedophile took to the Court of Appeal in a vain attempt to have those convictions quashed. The judge said there was “quite clearly a sexual element” to Carton’s offending.
He added: “There is a need to call out Carton’s actions for what they were — sexual abuse.
“To claim, which he did at his trial and the Court of Appeal, that he was the victim and his actions were not motivated by sexual desire or gratification is quite frankly untenable.”