Ex-soldier jailed after molesting teenage girls with drumsticks
Court told how ‘Drummie’ hit pupils on the bottom and engaged in sexual activity in bagpipe store
THE British Army’s former chief instructor for pipes and drums was jailed yesterday after hitting teenage girls on the bottom with his drumsticks at a boarding school.
James Clark was sentenced to a year and nine months in prison at Falkirk Sheriff Court after being found guilty of touching girls’ bottoms, sexual activity with a pupil and communicating indecently with a pupil.
In September a jury found him guilty of three charges of common assault by hitting or touching girls’ bottoms, two involving drumsticks.
Clark, 56, was the drumming instructor at the “traditional” Perthshire school since 2012 and an assistant house master. His victims were seven girls, aged 13 to 18, and he continued to offend until 2018.
Sentencing him, Sheriff Alistair Brown said: “Sexual activity by a man in relation to a girl under 18 in relation to whom he is in a position of trust is absolutely prohibited. There are no exceptions. It is always a crime.”
Clark, who now works as a gardener, was placed on the sex offenders’ register for 10 years. He showed no emotion as he was led to the cells.
The court heard during his sevenday trial that the 6ft 2in former colour sergeant had a “habit” of touching girls on their bottoms.
One pupil, now 23, said he had “regularly” struck her on the bottom, often during kilt-fitting sessions in the school’s clothing store.
She said during a band trip to Switzerland in 2015, when she was in her sixth year, Clark had “smacked me on the bum pretty much all the time”.
Other pupils told the court they challenged him about hitting their bottoms with his hands, drumsticks, or a rolled up copy of the register.
However, they said Clark, a father of six who was known as “Drummie”, would tell them: “I’m your school dad.”
A former pupil recalled that when she was 16, Clark had cornered her at a Christmas concert in the school’s central hall and told her: “The two of us should have children together.”
He was also said to have hugged girls and entered one senior girl’s bedroom when she was asleep, sitting on her bed before kissing her on the forehead.
Jurors heard that he had an “illicit affair” with a 17-year-old in 2018, which ranged from kissing in a cupboard to oral sex in a bagpipe store. She reported the liaison to the headmaster in February the following year.
The girl, now 20, said Clark had “abused” her, in his car, in the band hut, in her boarding house “and at one point
Father of six would tell them: ‘I am your school dad’
in the children’s tuck cupboard”. She told the court that when giving her a lift in his car he had put his hand on her thigh, pulled over, taken his seat belt off, and started kissing her.
During a journey on a motorway, she said, he had unbuttoned her jeans and put his hands in her pants. Clark had told her she could not tell anyone what he was doing, she said, and she had suffered from “victim shame and guilt for a long time”.
The court heard Clark had previously taught at Loretto boarding school in Musselburgh, near Edinburgh, and at George Watson’s College, another independent school in the Scottish capital.
Clark, of Edinburgh, had denied the charges.
His counsel, Sarah Livingstone, admitted the affair with the girl but prosecutor Cheryl Clark said the teenager had been groomed.