History teacher James Husband who taught at a prestigious private school has been jailed for 17 years for raping a teenage pupil.
A court heard Husband’s victim, who saw her abuser as a “mentor and father figure”, suffered a “life sentence” of suicidal thoughts and self-harm. Before raping her, Husband, from Wiggington in York, told the 16-year-old: “It’s OK, I’ve had a vasectomy.” Last week he was convicted of one count of rape as well as five counts of indecently assaulting a girl as young as 14 while teaching at Christ’s Hospital School in Horsham between 1990 and 1993.
Husband is the fifth teacher at the school to be convicted of sexually abusing students over a period spanning more than 30 years and involving 22 victims. A victim impact statement was read at Hove Crown Court in which the woman said Husband moulded her into his “plaything” and “puppet” so “he could do what he wanted to me”. “The grooming process was devious and malignant by making me feel special for the first time in my life, I became dependant on him for my own feeling of self-worth,” she said. “He twisted my mind to abuse my body and made my body feel dirty and degraded until I believed this to be true.” She said the abuse had left her with a “life sentence” of anorexia, suicidal thoughts and self-harm, with the prosecution bringing back flashbacks that were “unbearable”.
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