[imagesource:wikipedia]

BBC broadcaster Nicky Campbell has revealed that he suffered and witnessed sexual abuse at a prestigious Scottish private school, and is calling on the South African legal system to force the “evil”, “predatory” teacher to face justice.

Nicky Campbell said he experienced a “couple of breakdowns” as a result of the abuse rampant at Edinburgh Academy, saying that teacher Iain Wares who faces over 80 charges of historic abuse relating to scores of victims aged as young as nine, was a “sad, dark manifestation of the human condition”.

Speaking out in a BBC Panorama documentary to be screened tonight, Campbell described the 84-year-old alleged paedophile as a “slow-acting poison that is still in the veins”, The Daily Mail reported.

The Scot urged the South African courts to extradite the “multiple paedophile” Mr Wares to Scotland to face trial for his abuse at Edinburgh Academy and Fettes College, alma mater of Tony Blair.

Image: Nicky Campbell / Flickr

Campbell was molested by another teacher at the school, but said he saw Wares sexually assault a classmate in a changing room when they were ten years old.

He said Wares is ‘one of the worst, [most] predatory paedophiles this country has ever known’ – but said he hopes he will be brought to justice, adding: ‘I really believe that good will triumph over evil.’

Wares moved to South Africa and taught here until 2006, and is only set to face trial in Cape Town over abuse charges from February.

Image: Jamie Pyatt News Ltd

The tearful presenter said that he’s faced “some really difficult times” and “had a couple of breakdowns”, confessing that he has “a problem with being touched – unless I have total trust”.

He said ‘one of the most incredible things about the past year is that as much as the evil behaviour of Iain Wares is a sad, dark manifestation of the human condition, what we’ve seen… in terms of the courage, the coming together, the camaraderie [of abuse victims] is a wonderful, inspiring aspect of the human condition’.

He said attempts to extradite Wares to Scotland had hit ‘brick wall after brick wall’, adding: ‘For God’s sake – he’s a horrible, old, multiple paedophile. South Africa, come on!’

Alex Renton, a journalist who has investigated abuse at elite schools, told Panorama it was “insane” that “two of the poshest, best-regarded, grandest schools in Scotland tolerated for ten years the repeated offences of a violent, sexual predator – a psychopath”.

He mentioned that Wares had a “growing capacity for sometimes extraordinary violence” by 1977, and by 1979 it was “over for him at Fettes”. Still, the school gave him a “glowing reference”. Sickening.

Hopefully, our court system can do good on this one.

[source:dailymail]