'Sadistic and evil' teacher abused pupils for more than 20 years

A "sadistic" deputy headteacher at one of Scotland's most prestigious private schools has been found to have conducted a systematic campaign of violence and torture against children as young as eight over a period of more than 20 years.

- Libby Brooks, Severin Carrell

John Brownlee was found by a sheriff yesterday to have committed more than 30 assaults, after the former Edinburgh Academy house master was formally excused from trial owing to his advanced dementia.

Instead, the charges against the 89-year-old were heard in a quasi-trial process known as an "examination of facts" overseen, without a jury, by Sheriff Ian Anderson, who described the teacher's behaviour as "extreme criminal bullying".

Brownlee was found to have committed 31 charges of assault and assault to injury, relating to incidents spanning 1967 to 1991, as well as a composite charge of cruel and unnatural treatment across the years he worked as a teacher at the academy.

In a case based entirely on the testimony of survivors, Brownlee's victims - many speaking half a century after the assaults took place - provided harrowing testimony about the arbitrary and gratuitous nature of the violence they endured as children, many boarding away from home for the first time.

The men characterised Brownlee as a "sadist" and a "psychopath", who relished both the pain he inflicted and the terror of its anticipation.