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Broadcaster Nicky Campbell yesterday told how he cried in his wife’s arms after a sheriff ruled a teacher had abused him and others at an exclusive private school.
John Brownlee regularly assaulted children with various instruments, including a wooden bat called a clacken, a pool cue and a golf club, while teaching at Edinburgh Academy over a period of 20 years.
The “sadistic” teacher strangled the children and ordered them to sit in freezing baths, and also punished them by making them dig in a garden without proper clothing in cold weather, all between 1967 and 1987.
The 89-year-old was deemed unfit to stand trial due to health problems and instead a fact-finding hearing was held at Edinburgh Sheriff Court.
In his judgment, Sheriff Ian Anderson said he considered all but one of the Crown’s witnesses to be “credible and reliable” and found the facts on 32 charges, including 30 of assault, proven.
Victim Nicky Campbell in court where she gave evidence
The ‘sadist’ John Brownlee abused the young Nicky Campbell
And he added: “I accepted the plaintiffs’ evidence.”
Campbell said, “It’s like someone told the adults and now the adults believed us.” Today I have become a 10-year-old boy again.
‘I’ve been crying in my wife’s arms.
‘Those memories of him are still with me; They come to me at night. They are also with others.
‘Today is a wonderful launch. I have no hard feelings towards the Brownlee family. He’s not a healthy man, but all we wanted was for people to say “that happened, it shouldn’t have happened and it was wrong.”
The BBC journalist had told the audience about the terrible abuse he suffered when he was a student at the school between 1966 and 1978.
The 62-year-old said Brownlee was an “arbitrarily violent” man whose mood could change very quickly.
He described an incident in which the brutal teacher forced him to the ground and beat his neck and skull for about 20 seconds.
He also said that he and other students were often forced to bend over their desk and hit with a clacken (a wooden paddle used in a school ball game).
Fiscal depute Graeme Clark told the hearing that Brownlee had used “unacceptable”, “unjustified” and “excessive” force when reprimanding his pupils.
Mr Clark told how the abuse suffered by pupils included “ferocious” assaults using a variety of instruments. One victim described Brownlee as “a psychopath” and another said she had been left “begging for mercy.”
Nicky Campbell attended the fee-paying school as a day pupil (pictured as a boy) between 1966 and 1978, from the age of five until he was 17.
More than 30 former students detailed the sadistic abuse they suffered at the hands of the teacher between February 1967 and December 1987, including being locked in a shed for a weekend, hanging from a ladder and forced to sit in cold baths and hot showers.
Defense lawyer Andrew Seggie said the use of the clacken at school had been considered “reasonable and proportionate” at the time and Brownlee used “reasonable punishments” during some of the incidents.
Speaking outside the court, Graeme Sneddon, of the Edinburgh Academy Survivors Group, said: “The harm Brownlee did to young boys has caused lifelong damage to everyone involved.” Today justice has been done.
‘The sadistic, evil and violent monster John Brownlee took great pleasure in systematically and regularly hitting, choking, kicking, pulling hair, knocking unconscious, slapping, strangling and savagely beating young children with instruments of torture.
“They finally believed us.”
Brownlee will not face any punishment following the ruling.