A millionaire businessman who bought a boarding school so he could abuse pupils on his country estate with links to the Bronte family has been jailed for three years and three months.
Entertainment magnate Brian Martin, now 71, sexually abused a boy and girl boarder while using his position as Chairman of the Governors to groom them.
He had appointed himself ‘Provost’ of £37,000 a year Queen Ethelburga’s School, near Harrogate, North Yorkshire.
He then stunned parents by mothballing the building and moving the pupils into a new school on his own country estate at Thorpe Underwood Hall, Ouseburn, near York.
Det Sgt Graeme Bevington, who led the North Yorkshire Police investigation, was horrified by what happened next.
He said: ‘Brian Martin was a well-respected member of society and a successful businessman.
‘It was due to his success as a businessman that he was able to purchase Queen Ethelburga’s School which he moved from Harrogate to the Thorpe Underwood Estate where he lived with his family.
‘The students who attended the school considered it to be safe and family oriented, and Brian Martin was a key figure at the school.
‘Despite significant investment being made in the school, all this served to do was to create an environment that Martin could exploit for his own sinister gains.
The conviction of sexually assaulting a boy in the late 2000s followed a retrial of a case that was put before a jury in 2018, when Martin was acquitted.
Martin was also found guilty of indecent assault on a girl in the early-to-mid 1990s at another retrial held in 2019.
He was acquitted of six other child sexual abuse offences at the original trial in 2018, when he was accused of abusing boys and girls aged 13 to 17 between 2005 and 2010.
The millionaire, who moved to the village of Ferensby, near Harrogate, has been placed on the Sex Offenders’ Register.
If you have been subject to abuse at the hands of Brian Martin, please contact us to discuss a claim for compensation via info@remedylaw.co.uk or telephone on 02393552153