Retired teacher denies sexual motive for smacking children

Retired teacher denies sexual motive for smacking children

21 March 2018

A RETIRED Newcastle schoolteacher has taken to the stand at Downpatrick Crown Court to defend himself against a litany of indecent assault allegations.

Seventy five year-old Patrick James Carton, of Marguerite Close, Newcastle, faces 29 charges of indecently assaulting five girls and one boy between 1984 and 2007.

The former mathematics teacher, who denies the allegations, is accused of indecently touching and spanking six teenagers while working with them as a private tutor.

During the seventh week of his trial, Carton accepted he described an “unorthodox” disciplinary star system he used to deter students from making mistakes, with three stars serving as a warning, four for a smack, five for a smack over underwear and six stars for a smack to the bare bottom.

He defended his decision to use the system, despite the fact that smacking had already been abolished in government-funded schools, and said he believed it was appropriate if parents had consented.

He denied there was any sexual motivation in the system and said it was the teenagers’ choice whether or not they complied.

He added that “smacking was a very small part of my weaponry to improve these children.”

“I did smack these children and I did smack them on the bare bottom, I accept responsibility for that, but I did not feel at any time that was wrong,” he said.

“I smacked them but they did not feel those smacks as pain. They were gestures to challenge them to get things right and for them to commit.”

Carton said he had tutored about 150 students between the ages of 14 and 40, including engineers, doctors, dentists and solicitors, without complaint and suggested “people who have not had a successful life want to find somebody to blame”.

“I don’t know what their motive is, I don’t understand it. It is my life on the line.”

The jury of seven women and five men had previously heard from the six former students, including one man who was taught in his home by Carton in the 1980s.

He said said he had to lie across the defendant’s knee while he was smacked without underwear and recalled one incident in which he “bawled his eyes out” because the defendant would not stop smacking him.

While Carton admitted smacking the boy’s bare bottom, he insisted he “did not have to go along with anything.”

“I did not make him do anything he did not want to do, that he did not agree to do,” he said.

“When the parents gave me permission and the kids seemed to be in agreement with that, I thought that was fine. They committed to it and when people commit to something they want it to work.”

Referring back to evidence given by one of the female complainants, who had wept as she described allegations of sexual abuse during her tutorials, prosecutor Ms Laura Ievers said Carton must have feared his “cover was blown” when she refused to see him on the day she received her A Level results.

“After years and years of abusing these girls, somebody might speak out,” she said.

Ms Ievers accused Carton of going on the “charm offensive” so that the girl felt she could not speak up about what was happening.

“I can’t say what she believed but it did not happen,” he said. “I did not abuse the girls.”

The trial continues.