SENTENCING STATEMENTS

On sentencing, Lord Young said:

"William Bain, you have pled guilty to 11 charges involving the sexual abuse of children. Ten of these charges involved lewd, indecent & libidinous practices committed against boys aged 13 or younger, and one charge involved an indecent assault on a slightly older boy. Eight of the charges involved sexualised conduct towards the child on more than one occasion. The offending took place while you were employed as a teacher and house master at three different private boarding schools in Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Dumbarton between 1978 and 1999.

I do not propose to rehearse the full catalogue of your offending. It is sufficient in these sentencing remarks to note that the sexual offending included touching over and under their clothing; direct touching of their genitals; making sexual remarks to them; watching them shower; pressing your penis against them; masturbating them or compelling them to masturbate you; and, in one instance, orally abusing your victim.  These children were entrusted by their parents to these schools. They ought to have been nurtured and educated in a safe environment. Instead, it seems that, throughout your career as a teacher, you used your position of authority to pursue your own sexually deviant interests. It is apparent from the charges that you preyed on young boys at or around the age of puberty when they would be fairly new to each school. The agreed narrative indicates that some of your victims were especially vulnerable being homesick or lonely or feeling bullied. As a teacher and house master with pastoral responsibilities, your offending can only be viewed as a gross abuse of trust.

This is the second time that you have appeared in the High Court for sentence. In May 2016, you pled guilty to five charges of lewd, indecent & libidinous practices towards pupils at the same Dumbarton school mentioned in this indictment. You were sentenced to six years, six months imprisonment for those offences. I have seen the indictment from 2016 and the parole board report prepared by Lady Scott following that sentencing diet. Those five charges involved serious sexual offending over a 5 year period against children aged 13 or younger. Lady Scott’s report to the parole board noted that, in mitigation, it was said that there had been extensive investigations at other schools and no other offending had been identified so she sentenced you on the basis that your offending was restricted to this five year period ending in around 1994. We now know that your offending started in the 1970’s and continued until 1999.

I have been provided with a number of Victim Impact Statements. The passage of time has not resolved the damage that your behaviour caused. Your victims talk about feeling alone and lost; feeling that they were to blame; and that they could not tell anyone at the time since they thought no-one would believe them. They describe a terrible legacy in terms of the effects on their mental health and relationships. It is a reasonable assumption that many, if not most, of the other victims for whom I don’t have victim impact statements will also have suffered comparable psychological harm as a direct result of what you did to them.

In mitigation, I have had regard to everything said on your behalf by Mr McConnachie. I accept that you are now an elderly man; you have served a substantial previous sentence; you have caring responsibilities for your elderly mother; and that you assisted the Child Abuse Inquiry by giving evidence to it. I also accept that you have pled guilty to these charges at the trial diet. Although the timing of this plea appears to have been dictated by your personal circumstances rather than any particular feeling of concern for the victims, I do accept that a guilty plea even at this late stage has some utilitarian value in that it saves the victims from having to attend court and give evidence. I shall give effect to section 196 of the 1995 Act in the sentence I am about to pass.

I am going to impose a cumulo sentence on you which is a single sentence for all eleven charges. However, before I do that, I require to set out what sentences I would have imposed if sentencing you on each charge individually.

On charges 5, 8 & 23 I would have imposed sentences of 3 months imprisonment for each charge.

On charges 12, 20 & 25, I would have imposed sentences of 6 months imprisonment on each charge

On charges 7 & 16, I would have imposed a sentence of 3 years imprisonment on each charge

On charge 14 I would have imposed a sentence of 18 months imprisonment.

On charges 18 & 24, I would have imposed a sentence of 4 years imprisonment on each charge

The total of these sentences, if served consecutively, would be 17 years, 9 months. That would be excessive even for this offending. I must have regard to the principle of totality, as well as to the fact that you have already served a sentence from 2016 in respect of similar offending over part of the period which is covered by the current indictment. In all the circumstances, I have decided that the appropriate sentence for offending of this gravity against so many victims is a cumulo sentence of nine years imprisonment. Had you not pled guilty, the sentence would have been ten years imprisonment. That sentence will commence from today.

You will remain subject to the notification requirements applicable to sex offenders for an indefinite period, and your name will be added to the list of persons deemed unsuitable to work with vulnerable groups."