A FORMER member of staff at one of the country’s leading Roman Catholic schools has been acquitted of sexually abusing a pupil.

Sean Ambrose Farrell, who was a tutor at Ampleforth College’s junior school in the 1980s, closed his eyes and wiped away a tear as the verdicts were delivered at York Crown Court.

He had repeatedly denied abusing a pupil at the boarding school near Thirsk during music sessions since his arrest.

Mr Farrell, a University of York graduate and former organ scholar at York Minster, told the jury he had never kissed or touched the boy inappropriately while working at the school in the 1980s.

The court had heard Mr Farrell was accused of indecently assaulting the boy “once or twice a week” for months.

“That did not happen-ever,” he said. He also had denied having any sexual interest in a male or a child.

Mr Farrell said he was called in last October by the head teacher at Wellington College, a leading public school in Berkshire, where he taught music, to be told an allegation had been made against him.

“I felt sick that anybody could have made an allegation,” he said. “I didn’t know what it was.”

He fought back tears as he said he had been suspended by the school and issued with an interim order barring him from teaching, and he had been barred from being alone with his children under police bail conditions and unable to live at the family home at the school.

Mr Farrell, 50, of Abbeyfield Court, Riddings Road, Ilkley, was acquitted of four charges of indecent assault.

In cross-examination, he denied prosecution suggestions he had chosen the boy as possibly being vulnerable through homesickness and groomed him before abusing him.

“Let me make it absolutely clear, no,” he said. “What I did was do my best to help him in his studies.”

Teachers who knew him when he was a pupil at Ampleforth College, later as a fellow member of staff, and after he left the junior school, alleged they had never heard or seen anything about his behaviour with children to concern them and praised his character.

Others who had worked with him as organ scholar or assistant director of music, including Dr Philip Moore, former Master of Music at York Minster, gave similar character references.