Sex predator sentenced to three years in jail for abusing girls

Sex predator sentenced to three years in jail for abusing girls

11 March 2020

A RETIRED Newcastle teacher who abused two teenage girls while tutoring them maths has been jailed for three years.

Patrick Carton (77), of Marguerite Close, admitted two charges of indecent assault when he appeared in the dock at Downpatrick Crown Court last Thursday.

The sentence will run concurrently with a jail term which Carton is currently serving for similar offences.

In May 2018, after a seven-week trial, Carton was convicted of 29 counts indecent assault committed against five boys and one girl while giving them private maths lessons.

He was initially jailed for 13 years, which was later reduced to eight-and-a-half years by an Appeal Court judge.

Carton was formerly a maths teacher at De La Salle High School in Downpatrick and was head of maths at St Colman’s College in Newry.

He also tutored maths privately and used a “star system” by which students were smacked on the bottom if they got an answer wrong.

Passing sentence yesterday, Judge Geoffrey Miller said there was “quite clearly a sexual element” to Carton’s offending.

“There is a need to call out Carton’s actions for what they were — sexual abuse,” the judge remarked.

“To claim, which he did at his trial and the Court of Appeal, that he was the victim and his actions were not motivated by sexual desire or gratification is quite frankly untenable.”

The court heard that in 1984 and 1985 Carton indecently assaulted a 16 year-old girl, who was being tutored along with two other young people, who were in the same house, but in separate rooms.

Mrs Laura Ievers, prosecuting, said Carton told the girl he was going to smack her on the bottom if she made a mistake. He pulled her pants down and smacked her bare bottom.

In another incident she was smacked in front of the other two young people.

The girl only made a complaint in 2017 after she became aware of other complaints against Carton.

The court also heard that Carton indecently assaulted a second teenage girl between 2005 and 2007.

Mrs Ievers said the girl thought Carton was “joking” when he told her of his teaching methods and that he would smack her on the bottom.

Mrs Ievers said that on one occasion Carton put the girl over his knee and smacked her six or seven times, after which the girl ran out of her living room in tears.

Mrs Ievers said the girl had made an initial complaint in 2007, but made a further statement in 2018.

Mrs Ievers said the charges against Carton were sample changes and that his pleas were “welcome in the circumstances.”

In answer to a question by Judge Miller, Mrs Ievers said Carton would have taught hundreds of young people over the years.

A defence lawyer submitted that had the charges been dealt with at the original trial, a concurrent sentence might have been imposed.

Judge Miller referred to a report in which Carton was described as a “model prisoner”.

He also said Carton was a “gifted and talented teacher”, but had abused his privileged position in society and his church for his own ends.

He said Carton was selective in which children he chose to punish out of the hundreds of boys and girls he taught “speaks of control and desire to humiliate”.

The judge went on: “He is not a victim. He is a perpetrator of sexual abuse on those who suffered and continue to suffer.

“They should feel no shame. There is only one person who should feel shame.”

He told Carton: “You have brought irreparable damage to young lives over many years.”