Teacher guilty of sexually abusing pupil

A FORMER teacher of a Suffolk school has been found guilty of sexually assaulting a pupil nearly 30 years ago.

Alan Stancliffe, 58, of Pontefract, west Yorkshire, had denied three offences of indecent assault on a former pupil at Kesgrave Hall School, near Ipswich, between 1978 and 1980.

But a jury at Ipswich Crown Court yesterday found him guilty by a majority verdict of 11-1 on all three counts.

After the sentence was passed, Judge Neil McKittrick told Stancliffe he would continue to be registered on the sex offender's register. He will be sentenced in the first week of December.

Stancliffe was a woodwork and technical drawing teacher at Kesgrave Hall between 1978 and 1980.

The private boarding school catered for 40 boys between the ages of 11 and 16 who had been excluded from mainstream schools for disruptive behaviour.

During the trial, prosecutor Charles Myatt told the court that the victim noticed that Stancliffe was paying him particular attention and started visiting his dormitory cubicle and helping him with his homework.

On one occasion Stancliffe put his arms around the boy in his dormitory cubicle and performed a sex act on him.

The jury was also told by the prosecution that in 1980 he forced the boy to perform a sex act on him and also locked him in a woodwork shed and tried to force himself on him but the boy managed to escape.

During the trial the jury was told that they could take into account Stancliffe's previous convictions.

In 1999, Stancliffe was convicted of seven offences of indecently assaulting three former pupils of Kesgrave Hall.

During that trial a jury heard that Stancliffe had visited the boys' dormitories at night and sexually assaulting them while they were in their beds.

In 1982, after he left the school, he was convicted of three offences of indecently assaulting a 15-year-old boy.