Teacher Accused of Abusing Boys at Strand on the Green Flat

Patrick Marshall, who taught at St. Paul's, charged with 24 counts of indecent assault

70-year-old Patrick Marshall, a former teacher at St. Paul’s School in Barnes, has appeared in court accused of abusing 10 different boys. Some of the incidents are alleged to have taken place at a flat that he owned in Strand on the Green.

The charges being heard at Southwark Crown Court relate to a string of offences in the sixties and seventies when Mr Marshall was a geography and rowing teacher at St. Paul’s and Windsor Grammar School.

Patrick Marshall

He is accused of getting close to the boys’ families and gaining their trust before isolating his victims and either bribing or threatening them to perform sexual acts. The age of the boys involved ranged from 11 to 15 years and some are claiming their ordeal lasted up to two years.

Mr Marshall, was a popular teacher, generally seen by the pupils as more relaxed than others and he regularly accompanied boys on trips abroad or invited them to help with building work at one of his properties.

He worked at St. Paul’s between 1972 and 1980 having previously been at the school in Windsor. The acts of abuse alleged to have occurred at Strand on the Green happened before he taught at St. Paul’s. A group of school boys were staying at his flat and Mr Marshall is accused of twice putting his hands into the sleeping bag of a boy who now claims he had been subjected to a sustained campaign of abuse by the teacher.

Marshall often accompanied members of the St. Paul’s rowing team home on trips away to regattas and he has been accused of plying boys with alcohol and making sexual advances towards them. In one case it is alleged that he took a 14-year-old member to a disused airfield and assaulted him.

Mr Marshall, who is a married father-of-three faces 24 counts of indecent assault relating to nine boys and one count of indecency with a child. He was first arrested in 2014 and subsequently rearrested as more former pupils from schools that he had taught at came forward after publicity surrounding other cases connected with Operation Winthorpe the police investigation in abuse at Colet Court and St Paul’s school.

He denies the charges and the case is expected to continue for over a month.

January 15, 2017