Nine in court over jail drone conspiracy

A wealthy Hong Kong businessman “lived in fear” of a Roman Catholic priest who had belted him and fellow pupils at a Highland boarding school.

Paul Curran, 50, told a jury that he dreamt of being “haunted and hunted” by Father Benedict Seed, 83, for the five years he attended Fort Augustus Abbey.

He described one incident where he was belted with a leather tawse which left his hands and wrists bleeding, swollen and bruised.

Mr Curran added: “It was not corporal punishment, but an attack carried out in a physical rage.”

At Inverness Sheriff Court, Seed, whose real first name is Thomas, denies assaulting eight of his pupils over a 14-year period, one with a spiked golf shoe and another with a hockey stick on his genitals, to their injury.

One charge alleges that he caused a pupil to fall down a flight of stairs by kicking him.

The incidents are alleged to have happened between June 1974 and July 1988 when former Abbey priest Father Benedict was a chemistry teacher and headmaster at the