Unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum

If anyone is after the dates of birth of the convicted teachers they are a bit hard to find so I've posted them here.

Ajaz Karim, (15/09/1954), was found guilty of nine charges of indecent assault and one charge of attempting to indecently assault a woman
James Husband, 68 (26/02/1950), was jailed for 17 years, after being convicted of one charge of rape and five charges of indecent assault, all against one girl.
Gary Dobbie, 67 (13/06/1951), was convicted of nine charges of indecent assault on a male person, three charges of indecent assault, two charges of indecency with a child and one charge of attempting to indecently assault a male person. He is currently awaiting sentence.
Peter Webb, 75 (06/12/1942), pleaded guilty to a total of 11 charges of indecent assault on a male person and was sentenced to a total of five and a half years imprisonment.
Peter Burr, 73 (21/10/1944), pleaded guilty to a total of nine charges of indecent assault and was sentenced to six years and seven months imprisonment.

Quite a list !!

And another trial to come.

Webb also pleaded guilty in 2015 and served time for that

All on the nonce register for life, assuming they survive prison.

Well here's hoping they don't.

Ooops ! Is that non PC ??

Who cares !!

I hope they survive prison.
I also hope that eventually they come to some sort of realisation of the trauma they have caused their victims, and the hurt they have caused the wider relationships around the victims, their own families and friends.
That work is painful and difficult and time-consuming and destabilising and lasts a lifetime.
Anything else is an easy road.

Janey Jam-Jar wrote: ↑Sat May 04, 2019 10:05 pm I hope they survive prison.
I also hope that eventually they come to some sort of realisation of the trauma they have caused their victims, and the hurt they have caused the wider relationships around the victims, their own families and friends.
That work is painful and difficult and time-consuming and destabilising and lasts a lifetime.
Anything else is an easy road.

Even harder to see this happening with the three who pleaded not guilty I suppose

With the exception of Burr and Webb, the perpetrators are all quite different.

Burr and Webb appear to have preyed upon their victims in secret. Husband committed very serious offences against one person, while Karim's offences - vile though they were - appear to have been more indecent rather than particularly sexual in nature. Dobbie meanwhile seems to have been trying to rack up as many victims as he could.

The possible cover-up of Karim's offences apart, is the idea of a conspiracy just a convenient narrative for the press, rather than something that actually happened? I don't have a great deal of faith in the papers who love a good lie by selective reporting: there are repeated references to the maximum fees payable, but in not one of the articles have I seen a reference to the donation status that most of us relied upon.

It seems really hard to envisage how any teacher, no matter how depraved, would risk trying to attract others to join in the abuse. What has been confirmed in court, and what is merely press conjecture?

Burr and Webb were opportunistic.

There was a cover up with Karim. There is scope - it needs to be put no higher - for Dobbie and Husband to know that they would get away with what they were doing.

How on earth could the cycling shorts parties be allowed to go on? How was Husband able to have a series of pupil girlfriends so much younger than him and be emboldened to help himself. And how on earth did Dobbie rack up so many victims over such a long period of time?

I don't know the full detail of the evidence given this week but it sounds as though it was known that things would be covered up.

The priority now must be to do the right thing for the victims and hoping that the perpetrators have now all been prosecuted.

There is reason to believe that staff who failed so miserably in their duty have gone and that this will not happen again.

But it is important to know how it came to happen to prevent that happening again. And my view - for what it is worth - is cover up/protection.

max_ratcliffe wrote: ↑Sat May 04, 2019 11:02 pm With the exception of Burr and Webb, the perpetrators are all quite different.

Burr and Webb appear to have preyed upon their victims in secret. Husband committed very serious offences against one person, while Karim's offences - vile though they were - appear to have been more indecent rather than particularly sexual in nature. Dobbie meanwhile seems to have been trying to rack up as many victims as he could.

The possible cover-up of Karim's offences apart, is the idea of a conspiracy just a convenient narrative for the press, rather than something that actually happened? I don't have a great deal of faith in the papers who love a good lie by selective reporting: there are repeated references to the maximum fees payable, but in not one of the articles have I seen a reference to the donation status that most of us relied upon.

It seems really hard to envisage how any teacher, no matter how depraved, would risk trying to attract others to join in the abuse. What has been confirmed in court, and what is merely press conjecture?

Max - Dobbie and Husband were tied together for a reason.

Karim's offences were clearly sexually motivated and he was tried and convicted on this basis. His role in the school probably gave him less widespread access to pupils - rather he used the role he did have, as a sports coach, to develop one to one 'coaching' relationship which he then used to abuse.

Husband didn't only have one victim. He admitted in court that he had sex with two 17 year olds and this was the reason he left the school (and CH left it at that, despite the obvious safeguarding risks he posed) . Bizarrely, a teacher having sex with a 17 year old only became the offence in is now with the passage of new legislation in 2003. It's entirely reasonable to describe those others as victims, even if inadequate legisation at the time meant he wasn't prosecuted for it at the time.

It was repeatedly stated in evidence that pupils at different times sought help from different people, who should have acted on what was said, and protected him. However, either nothing was done, or totally effective action designed to protect the school and its reputation occurred (shifting jobs, firing people but allowing them to get jobs elsewhere). More than one comments has pointed out that Dobbie and Husband were in totally different 'cliques' at CH - theirs was a relationship which developed for a reason.

LHA wrote: ↑Sat May 04, 2019 10:52 pm

Janey Jam-Jar wrote: ↑Sat May 04, 2019 10:05 pm I hope they survive prison.
I also hope that eventually they come to some sort of realisation of the trauma they have caused their victims, and the hurt they have caused the wider relationships around the victims, their own families and friends.
That work is painful and difficult and time-consuming and destabilising and lasts a lifetime.
Anything else is an easy road.

Even harder to see this happening with the three who pleaded not guilty I suppose

That's the rehabitation part and the ideal outcome.

So were Dobbie and Husband actually connected together as part of the case?

I'm not trying to belittle the offences nor the damage done to the victims in any way. Being half a world away makes it difficult to understand what's fact and what's conjecture.

Thanks,
Max

Yes. The judge was satisfied there was a connection between their offending. Otherwise they should have been tried separately.

max_ratcliffe wrote: ↑Sat May 04, 2019 11:42 pm So were Dobbie and Husband actually connected together as part of the case?

I'm not trying to belittle the offences nor the damage done to the victims in any way. Being half a world away makes it difficult to understand what's fact and what's conjecture.

Thanks,
Max

richardb has the legal know-how to best explain. Last year they were tried together. Husband's victim went to Dobbie for support and he abused her. Something Dobbie said to her was evidence that Husband had told Dobbie about the rape. All this is in the press reports. Some forum members also went to the trial and were able to report first hand what was said.

JAH taught me and I really liked him. It's awful stuff for us to read about and try to understand.

richardb wrote: ↑Sat May 04, 2019 11:46 pm Yes. The judge was satisfied there was a connection between their offending. Otherwise they should have been tried separately.

Good grief. I hadn't realised they were tried together. Sorry, my question must have seemed ridiculous.