A FORMER maths teacher has been sentenced to 13 years in prison for 29 indecent assault charges.
Patrick James Carton, of Marguerite Close in Newcastle, Co. Down, would punish students for wrong answers by smacking them on the bottom.
In what he called his ‘star system’, the 75-year-old would issue a warning to students after they received three stars from him.
After four stars, students would be smacked over their clothes, after five he would smack them over their underwear and after six he would smack their bare bottoms.
The BBC reports that Carton worked as a private tutor while teaching at St Colman’s College in Newry and De La Salle in Downpatrick, and continued to tutor after retiring from teaching in 2002.
It was from these tutoring sessions that the accusations were made by five females and one male and were said to have occurred from 1983 to 2007.
The assaults took place in the victims’ homes, often in their bedrooms. Carton would make the victims lie on their bed or put them across his knee to carry out the smacking.
Carton was also found guilty of touching some of the victims in private areas and trying to make some victims kiss him and touch his crotch area.
During police interviews, Carton claimed he received no sexual gratification from the smacking and was merely trying to help the victims achieve the best results.
Sentencing Carton at Downpatrick Crown Court, Judge Brian Sherard described the tutor as a beacon of respectability who had fallen from grace.
He imposed a Sexual Offences Prevention Order on Carton for the duration of the sentence and ordered him to sign the police sex offenders’ register for the rest of his life.
