Beatings, humiliation and loss of self-worth: how Edinburgh Academy victims were scarred

Graeme Sneddon, centre, reads a statement alongside other victims of John Brownlee’s abuse outside Edinburgh sheriff court. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian

The enormity of the abuse suffered at the hands of the Edinburgh Academy teacher John Brownlee became clear when the first witness was asked a simple question about the moment his mother left him alone at the boarding house of the elite private school.

John Graham, now a trim 56-year-old with a goatee beard, was asked: how did he feel? Until then fluent and factual in the witness box, Graham froze. His face crumpled. In that moment, Graham again became the eight-year-old boy who had felt “not good” that day, but with the awful adult hindsight of the abuse he would endure there.