[A] WOODWORK teacher allegedly secured a South Cumbria boarding school pupil’s hand in a vice while striking him with a mallet, a court has heard.
Four men accused of historical physical assaults on boys at Underley Hall School, near Kirkby Lonsdale, are on trial at Carlisle Crown Court. They include the school’s former owner and three ex-staff members. Each denies charges which allege criminal conduct dating back to the 1970s and 1980s.
Today (TUES), an allegation against former teacher Fred Taylor, now 75, was made by a former pupil. The witness recalled being aged around 10, in an Underley Hall classroom, “playing around” with pea-shooters.
“He (Taylor) shouted at me,” he told jurors. “The next thing I know he has took me by the hand into the woodwork shop, put my hand into a vice, clamped into a vice, and started hitting me in the knees and elbows with a wooden hammer.”
He was left with “bruises” and a “sore” hand, he said. He admitted later assaulting Mr Taylor at the end of the term, punching him in the nose and leaving him bleeding “for what he did to me”.
Barrister Fraser Livesey, for Taylor, of Lower Park Royd Drive, Sowerby Bridge, West Yorkshire, suggested the ex-pupil had given different information to police.
“Did this really happen?” Mr Livesey asked of the alleged assault.
“Yes it did,” the witness replied.
When it was suggested he was being untruthful, the witness responded: “I don’t need to lie about what happened in school.”
The trial continues.
