BBC star Nicky weeps in wife’s arms as judge f inds teacher abused pupils
BROADCASTER Nicky Campbell yesterday told how he wept in his wife’s arms after a sheriff ruled a teacher had abused him and others at an exclusive private school.
John Brownlee regularly assaulted children with various implements including a wooden bat called a clacken, a snooker cue and a golf club while he taught at Edinburgh Academy over a 20-year period.
The ‘sadistic’ teacher choked boys and ordered them to sit in freezing baths, and also punished them by making them dig in a garden without proper clothing in cold weather, all between 1967 and 1987.
The 89-year-old was deemed unfit to stand trial due to ill health and an examination of facts hearing was instead held at Edinburgh Sheriff Court.
In his judgment, Sheriff Ian Anderson said he found all the Crown witnesses bar one to be ‘credible and reliable’ and found the facts proven on 32 charges including 30 of assault.
He added: ‘I accepted the evidence of the complainers.’
Mr Campbell said: ‘It’s as if somebody has told the grown-ups and now the grown-ups have believed us. Today, I have been a ten-year-old boy again. I have been weeping in my wife’s arms.
‘Those memories of him are still with me; they come to me in the night. They are with others too.
‘Today is a wonderful release. I bear no ill will to the Brownlee family at all. He is not a well man, but all we wanted was for people to say “that did happen, and it should not have happened and it was wrong”.’
The BBC journalist had told the hearing of the harrowing abuse he endured while a pupil at the school between 1966 and 1978.
The 62-year-old said Brownlee was an ‘arbitrarily violent’ man whose mood could turn very quickly. He described one incident where he was forced to the ground and had his neck and skull pummelled for about 20 seconds by the brutal teacher.
He also told how he and other pupils were often made to bend over his desk and were struck with a clacken, which was used in a school ball game.
Fiscal depute Graeme Clark told the hearing Brownlee had carried out ‘unacceptable’, ‘unjustified’ and ‘excessive’ force when chastising his pupils.
Mr Clark told how the abuse suffered by pupils included ‘ferocious’ assaults using an array of implements. One victim described Brownlee as ‘a psychopath’ and another said they had been left ‘begging for mercy’.
More than 30 former pupils detailed the sadistic abuse they suffered at the hands of the teacher between February 1967 and December 1987, including being locked in a shed over a weekend, hung over a stairwell and forced to sit in cold baths and hot showers.
Defence lawyer Andrew Seggie said the use of the clacken at the school had been deemed ‘reasonable and proportionate’ at the time and Brownlee used ‘reasonable chastisement’ during some of the incidents
Speaking outside court, Graeme Sneddon, of the Edinburgh Academy Survivors Group, said: ‘The harm Brownlee did to young boys has caused a lifetime of damage for everybody concerned. Justice has been done today.
‘The sadistic, evil and violent monster John Brownlee took great pleasure in systematically and regularly punching, choking, kicking, hair-pulling, knocking unconscious, slapping, strangling and savagely beating little boys with instruments of torture. ‘Finally we have been believed.’ Brownlee will not face any punishment following the ruling.
‘Those memories are still with me’ ‘Sadistic, violent and evil monster’