Former teacher jailed for dozens of child sex offences spanning 40 years

11 November 2024, 19:29

A former teacher and choirmaster has been jailed for 12 years after carrying out dozens of child sex offences over a period of more than 40 years.

David Pickthall of Brentwood, Essex, admitted at an earlier hearing at Colchester Magistrates' Court to 29 child sex offences against 19 people and spanning more than 40 years.

He admitted to 16 counts of indecent assault, 10 counts of voyeurism and three counts of making an indecent image of a child.

He was sentenced on Monday at Chelmsford Crown Court for the crimes, committed between 1980 and 2021 in Brentwood in Essex and Upminster in east London.

Pickthall was made an MBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours List in 2015 for his services to education and charity, and had worked on a number of TV and film projects, including Wallace And Gromit.

In sentencing, Judge Mary Loram KC said: "For over two decades you took advantage of your position to abuse boys in your care.

"You are without a shadow of a doubt a predatory and manipulative paedophile who has adapted his offending over the years.”

She added: "If you hadn't been arrested you would have carried on."

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Fiona Ryan, prosecuting, said Pickthall had admitted a "range of predatory sexual offences, primarily committed against students and former students of his at Brentwood School".

She said that "secretly he had a penchant for touching and spying on young adolescent boys and his desires were easily satisfied because of the positions he held".

The barrister said Pickthall would sexually assault boys "under the pretence it was part of the teaching style" and would "begin by tickling them under the guise of a mild punishment for getting something wrong".

He would progress to put his hands into their underwear, Ms Ryan said, adding that he gave students alcohol when they visited his home.

Pickthall would encourage students to stay in "what he called his guest suite", the prosecutor said, and he kept pornography there.

A student found a concealed video camera there, she said, which Pickthall recorded visitors with.

"He [Pickthall] selected and retained some of the most intimate images for his own sexual gratification," Ms Ryan said.

She said that in 2021, Pickthall used a fake social media profile - "pretending to be 17 initially" - and kept asking an underage boy for a photograph of his penis, which the boy eventually sent.

One of his victims, who cannot be named for legal reasons and who was given the pseudonym Mark, said ahead of sentencing that Pickthall abused him from around the age of 12.

Mark, who is now aged in his 50s, said Pickthall - who had taught him music - groomed him and began to touch him inappropriately. He said this went on for around four years.

"At the time the physical and the sexual side of it was really unpleasant but that isn't what stuck with me," said Mark.

"I would say that 90% of the damage he did to me was psychological.

"One of the things he said to me, and it will always just haunt me forever, is that... he said to me 'nobody will ever find you attractive or love you and you should be grateful for the physical attention I'm giving you because no-one else will give that to you'."

Detective Constable Chelsie Stamford, the officer in the case, said the 19 victims may be the "tip of the iceberg" and she urged any further victims to contact police.

"I do think he probably thought he was untouchable because the offences spanned more than four decades and he got away with it for that amount of time," she said.

"I think that perhaps because he had the title of an MBE and had worked on some TV and film projects, perhaps he thought no-one would suspect someone such as him would be capable of these crimes.

"But, of course, on the contrary, the crimes he committed were horrifying."

She said that one victim made a report to police in October 2021 and this led to investigators speaking with further victims.

"It quite quickly became obvious to me that his offending was on a large scale and there were many people affected by him," said Ms Stamford.