A FORMER PE teacher who groped boarding school pupils has been jailed after admitting he ‘has those tendencies’.

George Carroll, now 85, touched and grabbed boys during offences committed in the 1960s and 70s.

At the time Carroll, who lives in Queens Road, Bournemouth, was teaching at schools in Cumbria. This week he was jailed for two years by a judge sitting at Preston Crown Court after pleading guilty to nine counts of indecent assault. Police looked into Carroll’s offences as part of Operation Tweed – Cumbria Constabulary’s investigation into non-recent abuse at residential schools the south of the county. As part of that operation, three victims were identified.

One told police Carroll had invited him into the shower block and indecently assaulted him. Carroll also groped the victim in a tent on a camping trip.

The second victim described how Carroll had touched and grabbed him on various occasions when he was aged around 14 or 15. On several occasions the boy was asked to blow up footballs in the store room before being indecently assaulted by Carroll.

A third victim was a pupil at the same school at around the same time and reported similar offences of being indecently assaulted while blowing up footballs in the store room and being grabbed by Carroll in the showers.

In his police interview, Carroll said he could not fully recollect the incidents but did accept that he behaved in a sexually inappropriate manner with male pupils during his time as a teacher.

The defendant said: “I can’t see these youngsters making it up and I have these tendencies, so yeah.”

When asked about grabbing and groping boys whilst they were blowing up footballs, Carroll replied: “That would happen, yeah.”

Senior officer Doug Marshall said: “Every survivor of child abuse deserves to have their case investigated. The victims have had to live with what they were subjected to by Carroll for decades.”