Former Northamptonshire teacher guilty of prolific child abuse

A former schoolteacher from Northamptonshire has been convicted of abusing a series of young boys for more than a decade.

Between 1971 and 1987, Robert Gould, now 74, abused a series of boys in his classroom, in the course of voluntary activities and through personal contacts. He took advantage of his position as a teacher and his trusted position in the community to groom and abuse young boys.

Gould showed distinct patterns of behaviour while abusing his victims, starting with touching them to see how they reacted. When he was confident his actions would not be reported or resisted, he moved to the next level of abuse.

Gould was convicted of indecent assault in 1988 after some of his pupils complained that he was abusing them. However, another boy who was not a pupil had also made a separate allegation of serious sexual abuse. Later, in the early 2000s, another former pupil made allegations about abuse committed against him, but was unable to speak to the authorities about the abuse before he died in 2013.

In 2021, a former pupil, now an adult, made disclosures against Gould that prompted a large-scale investigation, uncovering 12 former pupils who had suffered similar abuse. The CPS charged Gould with a series of non-recent sexual offences, including indecent assault on a male person and indecency with a child. The CPS also took into account the previous reports of sexual abuse, including the allegations made by the victim who had died. These resulted in further charges, including buggery, a term used in law at the time to describe the rape of a male.

Gould was tried at Northampton Crown Court and on Monday 27 January was convicted of 29 serious sexual offences relating to all 14 victims.

Emma Cornell from the Crown Prosecution Service said: “Robert Gould passed himself off as a respectable primary school teacher and church volunteer. Behind the outwardly respectable mask, he was a paedophile and a predator, constantly abusing boys in his care and seeking to commit increasingly serious sexual offences.

“Gould’s 16-year campaign of abuse wrecked the lives of these 14 people. They have come forward now and told their story and I hope that seeing their abuser revealed for what he truly is will be of comfort to them and help them rebuild their lives.

“Today is about justice for the men who survived Gould’s abuse as children and for the family of the young man who passed away in 2013. Our message is simple. Abuse is abuse and regardless of how long ago it happened, please come forward and report it. Just as the CPS and the police have worked closely together in this case, we will continue to do everything we can as a partnership to bring people who have committed these vile offences to justice.”

Gould will be sentenced on 21 February.

Building the Case:

The CPS prosecutes offences according to the law at the time they were committed. This applies to all non-recent sexual offences. Robert Gould committed his crimes between 1971 and 1987, so he has been convicted of offences that have now been replaced by legislation that came into force in the early 2000s.

The task for the prosecution was to prove to a jury that the offences had happened, not specifically where and when. The defendant denied any suggestion of abuse. The strongest evidence was the accounts of each individual victim, describing similar, escalating patterns of abuse. The prosecution’s case was that these men could not have been mistaken about what had happened in their childhood and they could not have made up a story together.

Including evidence of offences committed against a victim who has died is unusual, as the victim cannot give evidence in court. However, in this instance, the victim had made disclosures to medical and legal professionals, as well as family members before he died. The CPS successfully applied to have this heard by the jury as hearsay evidence.

The evidence of the victim who reported Gould’s abuse in the 1980s was extremely important to the case. The CPS advised that although the allegations had not resulted in charges at the time, this was not a barrier to them being heard. The victim agreed to support the trial and the CPS reinstated this victim’s allegations as part of the case.

In selecting the most appropriate charges, the CPS had to consider prolific and repeated offending. To help the jury understand the full extent of Gould’s abuse, the CPS used what is known as specimen charges. These tell the jury the same offence has happened repeatedly, so they don’t have to come to a verdict on each specific incident.

The comprehensive case for the prosecution was made possible by a strong partnership between the police investigation and the prosecutor in the case. From an early stage the prosecutor gave legal advice to the investigation, identifying the lines of enquiry that could support a prosecution and advising how a strong case could be built. In turn, the police worked tirelessly to follow these lines of enquiry and secure the evidence from the victims to prosecute Gould for the full extent of his crimes.