January 2018 Church school deputy head caged over campaign of sexual abuse against teenage schoolboys A FORMER boarding school deputy headmaster has been jailed for 12 years for abusing children at a cathedral choir school while he was in charge. Paedophile Ian Atkinson of Brompton on Regis, Somerset, formerly of Staveley, Ripon was convicted of nine offences against two boys aged under 14 at two different boarding schools. He sexually abused one boy while he was a history teacher and boarding master at Ripon Cathedral Choir School in North Yorkshire during the early 2000s. The school closed in 2012. A police inquiry into claims against him revealed that he had committed similar offences against another boy while teaching at another boarding school in Hampshire a decade earlier. The 59-year-old was also convicted of downloading child sexual abuse images Judge David Hatton QC said Atkinson had committed the abuse on the pretext of providing ‘therapy’ to the boys which was in reality something for Atkinson’s own ‘perverted self-gratification.’ He added: “The boys trusted you. You gained their respect. You were in a position of authority. “You cynically abused that trust with frequency and behind a facade of respectability.” The Judge also said that Atkinson’s action had brought the teaching profession much disgrace. Atkinson was also ordered to register as a sex offender for life and made subject to an indefinite sexual harm prevention order.