Jailed for 5 years, Eton teacher who preyed on pupils
A TEACHER at Eton teacher was jailed for five years yesterday for sexually abusing pupils.
Matthew Mowbray was told by the judge he had committed ‘the grossest breach of trust’ in committing his vile crimes against four boys at the boarding school.
The 49-year- old made up to 180 ‘nocturnal’ visits to pupils’ bedrooms over the course of ten years, groping them, spying on them through their keyholes and filming them getting changed, his trial heard.
Judge Heather Norton jailed him for five years for 15 offences. The former geography teacher, who worked at Eton for 25 years, had pleaded guilty to six counts of making indecent images of children and one count of voyeurism in relation to covertly filmed images showing a pupil getting dressed.
He denied nine counts of sexual activity with four boys and one girl over ten years. He was found guilty by a jury at Reading Crown Court on eight of the charges and not guilty in relation to the girl.
The divorced father closed his eyes and bowed his head as he stood in the dock with a duffel bag for prison.
Judge Norton told him: ‘In what was the grossest breach of trust, over a period of years and in respect of a number of children, you breached their trust, the trust of the families who placed their children in your care, and the trust of the school who appointed you.’
The six- day trial last month heard Mowbray exploited his ‘almost unfettered access to boys’ by visiting their rooms at night at the £ 42,000- a- year boarding school, whose alumni include 20 prime ministers and Princes William and Harry.
Judge Norton said: ‘For each child, your actions brought discomfort and confusion at the time but also more lasting effects that have followed them as they have matured into young men. Depression, anxiety, stress, nervousness, a loss of confidence, physical and psychological distress, sadness – are all descriptions given by your victims as they describe their feelings now.’
The judge also praised the teenage friend of a victim who blew the whistle on Mowbray.
She said: ‘It was because he acted on his sense of what was right and wrong that Mr Mowbray’s actions came to light.’
Defence counsel Sallie Bennett-Jenkins QC said Mowbray expressed a ‘deep and genuine sense of remorse’. He had admitted downloading hundreds of indecent images of children as well as superimposing pupils’ faces on to the naked bodies of other, unknown youngsters.
‘Exploited his access to boys’