Ex-beverley Priest Roy Lovatt Jailed for Abusing Children at Thorp Arch Grange School

Hull Daily Mail
February 9, 2017

http://www.hulldailymail.co.uk/ex-beverley-priest-roy-lovatt-jailed-for-abusing-children-at-thorp-arch-grange-school/story-30122566-detail/story.html

JAILED: Roy Lovatt

A former Beverley priest has been jailed for 28 years for sexually abusing vulnerable children.

Roy Lovatt, 71, former priest of St John of Beverley Church, committed the offences in the 1970s and 80s when he was a housemaster at Thorp Arch Grange school on the outskirts of Wetherby.

Lovatt, recently of Queen Street, Redcar, was found guilty after a trial at Leeds Crown Court of four charges of indecent assault and five of buggery against two boys.

Lovatt, who was described by prosecutors as a predatory sex offender, also admitted 23 charges of indecent assault and two of gross indecency on three other boys and a girl who were not resident at the school.

He had got to know some of them when he was training to be a Methodist minister prior to his conversion.

Roy Leonard Allen, 72, of Moseley Road, Burnley, was found guilty by the jury of nine charges of indecent assault, two of buggery and one of attempted buggery involving four boys in the 1970s.

He was teaching at the time of his offending and later went on to become deputy head and headmaster at the school. He was jailed for a total of 18 years.

Jailing the pair, Judge Neil Clark said their victims at the school had given harrowing and emotional evidence revealing their "tormented childhood memories" at Thorp Arch within a culture of bullying and control.

"Your victims felt utterly unable to complain, they were trapped at school and couldn't leave, regarded in any event as naughty boys who could not be believed," he said.

"That your behaviour has continued to haunt their adult lives is abundantly clear.

"You were in a position of significant trust in relation to those boys. You were there to educate, nurture and care for them, that is what the people of Yorkshire paid for you to do and what they expected you to do, and what their parents trusted you to do.

"However you did not, you exploited their vulnerability, used that to prey on them to satisfy your own lust."

Counsel for the defendants, who are both married, said it was many years since the offences and they would likely die in prison.

Detective Superintendent Jon Morgan said: "These men had responsibility for the welfare and safety of vulnerable children in their care, but instead chose to abuse their positions of trust for their own sexual gratification.

"The long-term traumatic effect that their actions have had on the victims from such an early stage in their lives should never be underestimated.

"We hope that seeing these men finally brought to justice will provide some degree of reassurance to the victims."