A maths teacher has become the second paedophile to be jailed for sexually abusing students at a private boarding school in the New South Wales Southern Highlands during the 1980s.
In December, Brian Walter Napper pleaded guilty to eight offences committed between 1986 and 1989.
The 75-year-old previously served an 18-month jail term following a 2011 conviction for abusing two students between 1983 and 1991.
He faced Goulburn District Court via videolink from Goulburn Correctional Centre where he was sentenced to an aggregate sentence of four years and 10 months with a non-parole period of three years and two months.
Judge Mark Williams accepted the discounted sentence due to the guilty plea and considered the special circumstances around the offender's health and age.
However, he told the court the sentence needed to reflect the seriousness of the lasting traumatic effects of child sexual abuse.
"Children are clearly entitled to grow up free from defilement by sexual predators and free from the risk of psychological upset, confusion and difficulties caused later in life by such conduct," he said.
"It is notorious that sexual assaults have adverse psychological consequences.
"And the victim impacts statements, in this case, give eloquent testimony to the serious effects of this offending on each of the victims."
Abused by their tutor
Napper was employed as a teacher at the school from 1978 until 1992 where he served as the head of the cadet program.
The teacher provided private maths tutoring for each of the victims. During these sessions, he would sexually abuse the boys.
Napper abused them at their home, his own home and on the school grounds.
Statements from the victims read out in the court by Crown Prosecutor Glenn Porter said the abuse forever changed the course of their lives.
One victim told the court that Napper started tutoring him when he was 13 and he hoped he would fill the void left by the deaths of his father and grandfather.
On one occasion, Napper told the 13-year-old boy he had a new pair of boots in the cadet office that he could have.
When the boy arrived at the office, he was restrained and sexually assaulted by his teacher before being able to get free and run and hide on the college grounds.
"I felt like a bigger outcast at school because I just quit cadets for no reason and classmates were asking," he said.
"I felt so much shame and pressure for what had happened."
After Napper sexually abused him, he struggled to fit in at school and started taking drugs to stop the "nightmares", which turned into a lifelong addiction, he told the court.
He said the abuse impacted his relationships later in life, and that taking part in the prosecution of Napper had cost him his latest relationship.
"I have now lost that relationship, which I thought was the one," he said.
"In a night of total mental breakdown, I ended up in trouble and in jail, which isn't over and has now made things in my life 1,000 per cent worse than it was before.
"My life has been wrecked from the age of 13 and it doesn't matter how sorry you are, you can never give us our lives back to what they could have been."
Relationship breakdown after consecutive cases
Another victim said he was given beer by Napper, who made him watch porn before assaulting him while his mother was in the next room.
He said when he opened up to Napper about being abused by another teacher, Father Anthony Caruana, he continued the sexual abuse.
"I told you about other similar personal issues I was struggling with and asked you to help, then you took me to that little room below A block to further abuse me," he said.
He said the abuse drove him to use drugs and made him feel like a failure as a father and partner.
He said the toll of going through two consecutive sexual assault cases proved too much for his latest partner.
"Just five weeks ago, I was told by my partner that she can't keep going with me and I don't blame her," he said.
"I don't sleep much now since going through two similar court cases."
A letter from Napper was read to the court by Judge Williams expressing remorse for the trauma his students suffered, his breach of trust and his failure in his duty of care as a teacher.
Napper is the second teacher from Chevalier College to be jailed over paedophilia in the past 18 months.
In December 2021, Father Anthony Caruana was sentenced to 15 years in jail for sexually abusing 12 students between 1982 and 1989.
