A FORMER teaching support worker for Ampleforth College has denied indecently assaulting a pupil as he provided him with one-to-one music tuition.

Sean Ambrose Farrell, 50, has been accused of carrying out the historic child sexual offences as he provided teaching support on behalf of the country’s leading Roman Catholic boarding school during the 1980s. He denies four charges of indecently assaulting a boy “once or twice a week” for several months.

York Crown Court heard today Farrell, of Riddings Road, Ilkley, was an accomplished musician and was working as a temporary teaching assistant on behalf of Ampleforth College in Ryedale, North Yorkshire.

David Bradshaw, prosecuting, told the court Farrell provided his alleged victim with one to one music tuition in a small practice room, after waking the student up at 6.30am with a cup of coffee.

Mr Bradshaw said the boy regarded Farrell as his music teacher and described how he would stand behind him as he played the piano and massage his shoulders, which the pupil thought was “a bit weird”, but accepted it.

The behaviour progressed to hugging and kissing in the music practice sessions and then sexual acts, as the pupil began to believe he was having a relationship with the defendant.

The boy remembered Farrell would “talk a lot about love” and said it “would be amazing if they could go to bed together naked," which never happened. 

Giving evidence via a video link, the former pupil said although he had been quite outgoing at school he would have been “more vulnerable” than he realised, having been sent away to boarding school as a child and wondered if the defendant had seen that.

He said at the time he accepted the defendant’s behaviour, adding: “I didn’t have my parents there and I didn’t have that intimacy, just that emotional touch” and said he didn’t know whether it was normal behaviour.

But he recalled the defendant ensuring they couldn’t be seen from the windows of the music room.

On one occasion Farrell told him he would have to “watch out” when he went to upper school as he would be a “pretty boy”.

The former pupil said: “I remember him saying it really clearly and saying, “What is a pretty boy?”

“Years afterwards when I thought about it I thought, what a weird thing to say. I think I was just under his spell really.”

The abuse continued for about a year and the pupil involved kept it a secret, not telling anybody until he was called to jury service many years later as an adult.

Under cross-examination he denied that he was making up his allegations.

The alleged victim’s wife, in a statement read to the jury, said he had been called to be a juror in a trial involving sexual abuse allegations earlier this year.

He rang her to say it was the “worst case he could have had” and that he had something to tell her he had told no-one.

“He was crying hysterically.  He told me it was something that had happened to him when he was at prep school,” the statement said.

“He was sobbing.  I really didn’t know what to do.”

Paul Young, deputy head and later head of music at the junior school, alleged he didn’t see or hear anything about Farrell’s conduct at the school that gave him concern.

“He was a very organised guy, he seemed squeaky clean to me, very efficient with students at the college,” he alleged.

He alleged that the music classroom was among a few rooms used for music practice and that sometimes lessons in the classroom were interrupted by ill students needing to go through it to get to the infirmary and that if someone was ill they would interrupt students’ practice to get to the school’s sick bay.

The trial continues.