Ex-teacher jailed 2 years for 1970s assaults on pupils

A 77-year-old former teacher was sentenced to two years in prison on Tuesday after a jury convicted him of indecently assaulting four girls at a south Belfast grammar school in the 1970s. William Lloyd-Lavery, of Richmond Avenue in Lisburn, received the concurrent term at Belfast Crown Court for six counts of indecent assault committed between 1975 and 1979 while he worked as a history teacher at Richmond Lodge College on Malone Road.

The victims were aged 13 or 14 at the time. Court heard they were abused in locations including a stationery cupboard, a storeroom and corridors. One girl described being lifted off the ground in the cupboard under the pretense of fetching a history book, where Lloyd-Lavery touched her genitals, leaving her frozen in horror. She told her mother, then 94, who visited the school the next day but sensed the headmistress wanted the matter dropped. Another victim recounted being led to a storeroom, questioned about the Bubonic Plague, then touched on her armpit, breast and groin over her skirt. She later felt hunted like prey in the school's corridors.

Lloyd-Lavery denied the charges throughout a two-week trial earlier this year, calling the accusations...