Boarding school teacher jailed for 12 years for sex abuse of four pupils
A former boarding school teacher who sexually abused four pupils and had sex with one girl on his wife’s wedding dress to “satisfy his fantasies” has been jailed for 12 years.
Oxford-educated Simon Ball, 42, admitted sexually abusing one girl while he was director of music at Kimbolton School near Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, and was found guilty of sexually abusing three girls at his former school, Giggleswick School in Settle, North Yorkshire, following a nine-day trial.
In her victim personal statement, one Giggleswick pupil told of her “guilt and sadness” that in the time it took her to speak to authorities, another girl had fallen victim to Ball.
Judge Sean Enright, sentencing at Peterborough Crown Court, jailed Ball for five years for the Kimbolton offences and seven years for the Giggleswick offences, with the jail terms to run consecutively.
He told Ball (pictured): “These offences were all about satisfying your fantasies. There was never anything in it for the girls.”
He added that Ball, whom he described as a “talented musician”, would never work in a school again as a result of the “great harm” he caused to his victims.
Ball was banned from working with any girl aged under 18, or having one-on-one contact, without permission from the relevant public protection unit.
He was ordered to show police any device capable of taking a digital image on request, and barred from contacting any of his victims for life.
An investigation into Ball’s conduct at Giggleswick School in the early 2000s was reopened following the allegations at his new school and the offending was discovered.
Ball had sex with one of the three girls from Giggleswick on his wife’s wedding dress, jurors were told.
Charles Falk, prosecuting, said Ball liked the Kimbolton pupil to dress up in her “schoolgirl outfit and fishnets”, and police seized 678 indecent images that Ball had taken.
Ball proposed to his victim and bought her a ring, had sex with her in a cupboard in the school’s music department and in the headmaster’s guest lavatory, and asked her to go on the Pill following a pregnancy scare, the court heard.
Reading the victim personal statement of one of the Giggleswick victims, Mr Falk said the girl “feels guilt and sadness that it took her 12 years to tell the truth and in those 12 years someone else got hurt”.
He added that a second Giggleswick pupil felt “robbed of her childhood” and “angry” at the school.
Reading the statement of the Kimbolton victim, Mr Falk said: “It’s not like he’s moved schools and tried a different method.
“It’s almost the same and it bothers me.
“I want to find out why he was allowed to commit such a similar crime again.
“He was my teacher. He was meant to protect me.”
Claire Matthews, mitigating, said Ball was in a “serious relationship” with the pupil from the Kimbolton School, was a “talented musician” and an “intelligent, dedicated, well-educated” individual.
Ball, formerly of Greenwich, south-east London, and currently of Newent, Gloucestershire, admitted five counts of engaging in sexual activity while in a position of trust at Kimbolton School, and was found guilty of four counts of engaging in sexual activity while in a position of trust and one count of indecent assault at Giggleswick School.
The jury was unable to reach a verdict on four further counts relating to Ball’s time at Giggleswick School, and the Crown Prosecution Service did not wish to proceed to a retrial.
An NSPCC spokesman said: “The fact it has taken so long to bring him to justice raises serious questions about how he was able to continually commit these crimes over more than 10 years, and why these allegations were not thoroughly investigated at the time.”
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