TV star Nicky Campbell has urged prosecutors to take action against a former teacher accused of brutalising him as a boy.
Nicky and a group of former schoolmates will be told on Monday whether John Brownlee, 88, is to face charges over claims he “sadistically” beat and abused lads at Edinburgh Academy.
The telly and radio host and other alleged victims fear prosecutors won’t press ahead with the case as Brownlee is too “old and frail” to stand trial.
But Nicky said age should be no barrier to abusers facing justice. He told the Record: “Some people have argued that because of his age there should be mercy, but he showed no mercy on the grounds of age and devastated the lives of many people.
“I remember being hit with his knuckles and feeling his knuckles down my neck and on my head. To this day, I feel terrified when I think of him.”
Brownlee, now in a nursing home in Edinburgh, was deputy head of the academy’s primary school for 31 years and housemaster of Dundas House, the junior boarding house, for 11 years in the 70s and 80s.
Nicky and fellow campaigners claim they know more than 80 former pupils have accused him of the most callous violence against them when they were primary school pupils.
He said: “Corporal punishment was legal back then but Brownlee took it way beyond that. It wasn’t punishment. It was sadistic mental and physical brutality. He took pleasure from cruelty. That stuff never leaves you. I’ve spoken to so many men who he scarred for life.”
Nicky and other campaigners fear prosecutors at the Crown Office will take Brownlee’s age and health into consideration.
Academy survivors have been campaigning for Brownlee’s arrest for more than a year. They have been told by police that 18 charges have been submitted to the Crown Office for cruelty against boys as young as seven over 30 years.
Brownlee is one of two alleged abusers from the academy under investigation. Iain Wares, 83, is accused of sexual and violent offences against boys at the school and at nearby Fettes College, where he also taught.
He returned to his native South Africa, where he also faces charges, and is the subject of moves to extradite him to face multiple charges in Scotland. Brownlee was best man at Wares’s wedding in 1970.
One of Nicky’s fellow campaigners said: “The relentless and merciless beatings handed out to us by Brownlee as defenceless little boys haunt me to this day.
“I can hear boys screaming and pleading for mercy as he picked them up off the floor by the hair and continued beating them with an 18-inch wooden bat. Their screaming gave me nightmares. I can’t make sense of a grown man taking a run-up to kick a little boy up the backside – dreadful beyond words.
“He must be arrested if the law in Scotland is to mean anything.”
Speaking on behalf of the Edinburgh Academy Survivors group, Giles Moffatt said: “There is a history of the Crown Office letting people like this go. ‘Too old, too frail, too ill,’ comes the standard reply to a catalogue of charges.
“Well, we were too little, too weak and too scared to stand up to the senseless brutality. Why should age be an excuse? This man snuffed out childhoods with pleasure and impunity.
“He should stand trial and be judged in court. We have met with prosecutors recently and they seem to understand the lasting impact of abuse, which makes us optimistic that Brownlee will face justice.
“Among the people we know that Brownlee abused, all have had years of therapy, and some died young. What a legacy.”
Giles added that, if doctors said Brownlee was incapable of standing trial, the Crown Office should look to make a “statement of fact” to help victims achieve closure.
This involves a legal process to establish guilt and matters of fact without a prosecution of the alleged offender due to age or illness.
In their pursuit of justice, members of the group are also exploring action against former governors of the school from 1970 to 1990.
Some former pupils have alleged governors and other members of staff colluded to cover up abuse by Brownlee, Wares and others.
However, Giles added, the Edinburgh Academy Survivors group has had constructive meetings with the current leaders of the school and seen marked improvements.
Underlining the school’s openness about its past, allegations of abuse were mentioned at the academy’s year end prize-giving ceremony.
School leaders said evidence would emerge at the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry that would be “shocking, upsetting and deeply disturbing” and acknowledged pupils who spoke up in the past were punished and called liars.
A spokesman for Edinburgh Academy said yesterday: “We deeply regret what happened at the academy in the past.
“We have committed to working closely with the relevant authorities including Police Scotland as they investigate what happened. We also encourage anyone who has been a victim of abuse to contact the police.”
The Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service said: “The Procurator Fiscal received a report relating to an 88-year-old male and incidents said to have occurred between 1968 and 1983. Criminal proceedings will be raised if the reports contain sufficient evidence of a crime and if it is appropriate and in the public interest to do so.”
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