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Glasgow Live
Glasgow Live
National
Rory Cassidy

Newton Mearns teacher jailed for sexually abusing schoolgirls wants to serve sentence at home

A former teacher who sexually abused schoolgirls for almost 20 years asked to be released from prison early.

William Wright 's bid for freedom comes as he serves a four year jail sentence for terrorising little girls at Eastwood High School, where he worked as a music teacher for decades.

Just a year after being sentenced at Paisley Sheriff Court the 81-year-old asked to be allowed to serve the remainder of his sentence at home, the Daily Record reports.

READ MORE: Glasgow hospital nurse ripped off NHS in wages scam

But his appeal to be released on a Home Detention Curfew was rejected by the Parole Board for Scotland, because he still poses a risk to children.

Authorities instead ruled that Wright, from Elderslie, should remain behind bars, with a letter sent to victims revealing why they ruled it is not safe to release him into the community.

It says the pensioner is an unrepentant sex offender who has "a deviant sexual preference", and points out that he failed to engage with social workers trying to help him change his ways.

The letter explained: "The offender did not accept responsibility for their offences or that there was anything about their behaviour which led to their convictions.

"They therefore considered that they did not pose a risk of harm to children and did not need to change. The Board disagreed.

"The offender lacked insight into the risk they presented and took no personal responsibility for the harm done to their victims.

"Little to nothing was known about their pathways to offending, making it impossible for social work to formulate an adequately tailored community facing risk management plan."

The letter went on: "Neither prison-based nor community-based social work recommended release as the offence was unable to engage with them, show insight or take any responsibility for why they found themselves the subject of a long-term sentence for sexual offending against children.

"Due to this intransigence, offence-focused work would be limited.

"The offender was assessed as having a deviant sexual preference, had not carried out offence-focused work and was unable to participate in programme work due to their limited insight.

"It was the view of the Board that their risk was not currently manageable [in the community].

"That the offender was able to follow prison rules did not persuade the Board that their risk was safely manageable in the community, because there are no potential victims in custody."

The letter, issued in February, ends by saying that there should be another review next February.

In 2018, Wright was jailed for abusing some former pupils at the Newton Mearns school, prompting other ex-students to come forward to police.

Last year he went on trial at Paisley Sheriff Court charged with abusing three women when they were teenagers.

One of the other women was the first witness, telling the court Wright abused her more than 100 times in her first year of secondary school.

The jury was told she'd been abused by Wright more than a thousand times in total whilst she was at the high school.

After her testimony, Wright struck a plea deal with prosecutors to plead guilty to charges in relation to her and was jailed for the offences.

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