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.
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