Former teacher and football coach is jailed for sexual offences

A FORMER Spanish teacher and football coach from Scarborough has been jailed for sexual offences and making indecent images.

Martin Fisher, 63, who taught for two decades at Scarborough Sixth Form College, was sentenced at York Crown Court yesterday to three years in jail after previously pleading guilty to three charges of indecent assault on a man over 16 between 1986 and 2001 and seven charges of making indecent images of children.

Fisher groomed his victims by inviting them to his home where he supplied them with alcohol, hosted parties, allowed them to use his car and showed them pornographic videos, police said.

Some of the victims were invited to stay over where Fisher went on to sexually abuse them under the pretence of physiotherapy and massages, police added.

Detective Constable Alison Morris, of North Yorkshire Police’s Non-recent Abuse Investigation Team, said: “At the time of the offences, Martin Fisher was in a position of trust and he abused that trust for his own sexual gratification. This is a clear case of grooming demonstrated by Fisher’s befriending of his victims and showering them with alcohol, cigarettes and access to a car. He made them feel beholden to him and unable to report the abuse that was taking place.”

Speaking about the indecent images, DC Morris added: “By downloading these sickening images, offenders are fuelling the demand for them. Child abuse is everyone’s business and anyone who suspects a person of downloading such images should report it to the police.”

Fisher was also issued with a ten-year Sexual Harm Prevention Order and placed on the sex offender register for life.