A FORMER member of staff at Ampleforth College’s junior school allegedly abused a pupil during one to one music sessions, York Crown Court heard.

The alleged victim, now a man, claimed in evidence that Sean Ambrose Farrell indecently assaulted him “once or twice a week” for months.

He claimed Farrell would smile while he carried out one kind of abuse.

“I just remember the smile. I don’t know why it sticks in my memory, but it does,” he claimed.

“He would talk a lot about love. I remember him saying …. It would be amazing if we could go to bed together, be naked together.”

Farrell, 50, of Abbeyfield Court, Riddings Road, Ilkley, denies four charges of indecent assault.

Opening the prosecution, David Bradshaw said Farrell had himself been a pupil at Ampleforth College boarding school in the Howardian Hills north of York.

After he left, he returned for a year as a member of the college’s teaching staff during the 1980s and would help boys with music practice and tuition.

“He was to all intents and purposes a teacher there, being introduced as a teacher to pupils, who regarded him as a teacher and called him Mr Farrell,” said Mr Bradshaw.

“The prosecution say the defendant took advantage of that boy at school, took advantage of his age and the situation he was in at boarding school.”

Farrell started by massaging the alleged victim’s shoulders and progressed to two other types of indecent assault, alleged the barrister.

“He (the boy) idolised him,” he alleged.

The complainant, giving evidence, alleged he felt that he was in some kind of relationship with Farrell and that the abuse blighted his life.

He claimed that when he was at university, he felt he had to prove he was heterosexual and be “one of the lads”.

Under cross-examination he denied that he was making up his allegations.

The alleged victim’s wife, in a statement read to the jury, said he had been called to be a juror in a trial involving sexual abuse allegations earlier this year.

He rang her to say it was the “worst case he could have had” and that he had something to tell her he had told no-one.

“He was crying hysterically. He told me it was something that had happened to him when he was at prep school,” the statement said. “He was sobbing. I really didn’t know what to do.”

Paul Young, deputy head and later head of music at the junior school, alleged he didn’t see or hear anything about Farrell’s conduct at the school that gave him concern.

“He was a very organised guy, he seemed squeaky clean to me, very efficient with students at the college,” he alleged.

He alleged that the music classroom was among a few rooms used for music practice and that sometimes lessons in the classroom were interrupted by ill students needing to go through it to get to the infirmary and that if someone was ill they would interrupt students’ practice to get to the school’s sick bay.

The trial continues.