THE owner of a private school accused of sexually abusing its pupils is a “kindly uncle”, a “larger than life” type character and the victim of “malicious” allegations, according to his defence barrister.

The prosecution allege that Brian Richard Martin, 68, abused his position as owner, chairman of governors and principal trustee of Queen Ethelburga’s School near York, to carry out sexual crimes over nearly two decades.

Defence barrister Tania Griffiths QC told the jury: “You will have to decide whether he was a paedophile who used his position and wealth to abuse children. Or, as we say, a larger than life character, a big brother type, a kind uncle who offered friendly advice and a release from the confines of the boarding school environment.”

Martin, of Farnham Lane, Ferrensby, Knaresborough, denies 24 charges.

Together the charges allege he abused five children, most of them pupils at the school, and made sexual suggestions to a sixth, also a pupil.

Prosecutor Mark McKone claimed that Martin showed pornography to two boys and abused each of them while the other watched. He alleged that Martin told one boy who sent a sexual picture of a girl over the internet he had spent £20,000 preventing him from getting in trouble with the police.

Ms Griffiths told Leeds Crown Court, Martin was a “real life rags to riches tale” and claimed the prosecution had painted him as a man “so rich he could buy anything he wanted, so rich he could buy any body he wanted, a man so powerful no-one was able to resist him.”

“This is not Brian Martin,” she said. She claimed that after making his “vast wealth” in the insurance industry, Martin had given up his home at Thorpe Underwood Hall to house the school so that its pupils could enjoy the same benefits he had had as a child. She claimed the first complainant had made “malicious, horrible allegations probably motivated by compensation”.

The trial continues.