A FORMER pupil has claimed that a housemaster strangled him into unconsciousness as he sexually abused him at a now-closed North Yorkshire residential school.
The alleged victim, now aged 36, told a jury that he turned to staff member Anver Daud Sheikh for protection against bullying.
The housemaster told him he was going to a "safe place", then took him to a staff bedroom where he sexually attacked the boy twice.
The alleged victim said that between the attacks, the housemaster held him round the neck until he blacked out. When he came to, he was lying partially undressed on a bed while the staff member bent over him.
The boy alleged he tried to resist the abuse and that after it finished, he locked himself in a toilet for half-an-hour while the housemaster tried to persuade him to come out.
The staff member threatened he would "finish what he had begun" if the boy spoke out, claimed the former pupil.
He alleged he did tell a second housemaster about the abuse, but nothing happened, so he kept silent for nearly 20 years.
"I lost faith. When you tell the truth and you are not being believed, what can you do?" said the former pupil in the witness box at York Crown Court.
"You get on with your life and try to forget the past."
He said: "He took my youth away. He took my youth away."
The former pupil said he went to the police in 1999 after watching a Crimewatch programme featuring a young girl rape victim.
Sheikh, 42, of Wilson Street, Leicester, denies two serious sex assault charges and two indecent assaults against two boys aged 14.
Opening the prosecution, Julian Goose QC alleged that Sheikh, then known as Michael Anvers, was in a position of trust and responsibility at the school in the 1980s.
He visited both boys' dormitories when they were sleeping alone. He offered the second boy a cup of tea and took him to his staff flat. There he abused him.
"The defendant held a knife, but he didn't threaten the boy with it," alleged Mr Goose.
Sheikh threatened the second boy that he would kill him if he told anyone about what had happened.
The trial continues.
Updated: 12:03 Wednesday, May 08, 2002
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