Sex-for-Mars bars victim ‘sought to profit from trial’

Matron is cleared of assault after accuser who wanted £120,000 compensation changed his story in court

A FORMER pupil who said he was paid in Mars bars for sex by a school matron only made the claims because he was suing the institution for £120,000, a court heard. The boy was 11 when he claimed he was abused by Tiffany Carter, then 17, for six months while he was a boarder.

He said he only sought legal advice years later after the Jimmy Savile scandal, Lewes Crown Court heard.

Now a teacher in his 40s, he was accused of using a criminal trial “as a stepping stone” to compensation.

A jury yesterday took just over an hour to clear Ms Carter of two counts of indecent assault and three counts of gross indecency with a child.

Ms Carter, 46, wept as the “not guilty” verdict was read out. She had denied assaulting the boy between September 1986 and February 1987.

After the trial she said: “I just want to get on with my life and say that he was only doing it for the money.”

Before the criminal case against Ms Carter, her accuser had begun civil action against St Andrew’s Prep School, Eastbourne, seeking £120,000.

He claimed that while he was a pupil at the school, Ms Carter enticed him into her bedroom with chocolate snacks and the chance to watch TV. The abuse, he said, started with “cuddling and kissing”, but it moved on to oral sex and intercourse, for which he was paid in Mars bars.

The father of two, who cannot be named, said he lived with the secret until the Savile scandal encouraged him to come forward.

Julian Dale QC, representing Ms Carter, said his client only worked at the school for four weeks and the pupil and his mother’s account had changed throughout the trial.

He said: “There is a lot of evidence in this case that is a frightening mess. Since last Thursday, when the victim signed a civil action affidavit, his account has changed.”

Judge Richard Hayward said: “The victim said the abuse carried on for as long as six months. But documents showed that the defendant only worked at the school for four weeks.”

Paperwork showed Ms Carter began work at the school on Sept 3, 1986 and left on Oct 8, 1986.

Mr Dale added: “He [the accuser] said it happened in his second year and she would invite him up to her bedroom after lights out. He gave an account of an occasion when the school was delousing the building and she kept him back to have sex in the showers and even gave him oral sex, and this continued for months.

“I asked him why this changed. He said, ‘Well a day to a child is like a month’. The difficulty is we don’t know whether the alleged victim was sexually abused by a matron, a gap student or another member of staff, but it was not by my client.”