Unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum

Spoonbill wrote: ↑Thu Jul 05, 2018 2:21 pm

J.R. wrote: ↑Thu Jul 05, 2018 12:58 pm.... and of course, they still have the right of appeal.

....and I'm sure Husband most definitely will. After all, he's the only one with a cat in hell's chance.

What are his chances for appeal?

From the DM article:
"At one of the gatherings, a victim recalls a man who also attended as a guest rating the boys in order of their attractiveness, to Dobbie's 'delight'."

Who is this man?

In the modern day appeals are thin on the ground.

To win an appeal against conviction requires that the Court of Appeal find the conviction was "unsafe".

This will usually mean either that the judge has wrongly ruled evidence to be admissible when it was not OR that the judge got the law wrong in her directions to the jury in the summing up.

I can't think of many contested rulings of admissibility in this sort of case. And a sensible judge will circulate his/her proposed directions of law to all the briefs in advance of the summing up for correction, thereby avoiding getting it wrong.

So Husband probably has more chance of getting a gin and tonic in Lewes prison tonight than he has of winning an appeal.

At the moment I just cannot think beyond empathising with how alone that poor child who cried for help to the Chaplain and was betrayed must have felt.

A truly awful betrayal of trust all round and I hope the punishments reflect that.

Just to point out most of the news articles state that Dobbie’s offending starting in 1998 whereas the Sussex Police website states it as starting in 1988.

https://sussex.police.uk/news/former-te ... ic-school/

1988 makes a lot more sense, the mutual victim of both Dobbie and Husband doesn’t tie up with his offences starting in 1998 given Husband left the school in 1994.

The Sussex Police website is illuminating.

Firstly the dates they cite will have been taken directly from the charge sheet and will be accurate.

Secondly there was speculation some months ago about why Husband and Dobbie were to be tried together. The answer is that they both abused the same girl.

That poor, poor girl.

I notice the police reports refers to boys, men, girls and women. Is this down to the differing ages of the victims?

richardb wrote: ↑Thu Jul 05, 2018 10:55 pm The Sussex Police website is illuminating.

Firstly the dates they cite will have been taken directly from the charge sheet and will be accurate.

Secondly there was speculation some months ago about why Husband and Dobbie were to be tried together. The answer is that they both abused the same girl.

Thanks - thought so. Suspect 1998 is a typo by the first journalist & all the others have lazily repeated it. 3 years of offending is bad enough but 13 is just horrific. The victim preyed upon by both of them must have had so much courage to come forward and give evidence. So horrified by all this.

Most of the papers used Press Association copy which is why they all made the same mistake.

As it turns out that Dobbie was very predatory, I’ll be surprised this will be the last of it. As it would be hard to believe that after all his offending nothing happened between 1996 and when he left in 2000/2001

Pure speculation though

I have a huge amount of respect for the bravery of the victims, coming forward and having to relive what happened to them after living with it for so many years. I hope the verdicts today have given them a sense of resolution, or even closure.

.

Thing the thing that got me most is that when a girl of 15, having been raped by one of her teachers, summoned up the courage to talk to the chaplain - and can you imagine how emotionally difficult that must have been? - he responded by sniggering at her and then assaulting her for himself.

And alongside we've got the cavalier way in which the school appears to have repeatedly conspired with sex offenders to allow them to quietly resign, leaving them free to seek out fresh victims in other schools.

Does anyone have a definitive list of former teachers now convicted? From reading posts on here we have the 5 recent ones plus Peter Brownlie (crimes committed whilst teaching at CH but victims were not pupils) and Ian Rowley (crimes committed against pupil(s) at another school). Obviously that makes 7.