Edinburgh crime: Former Edinburgh Academy teacher accused of 20 years of child abuse not to stand trial due to ill health

The former Edinburgh schoolteacher deemed unfit to attend court

A former teacher at one of Scotland’s most prestigious private schools will not stand trial accused of a series of historic physical abuse allegations against pupils due to ill health.

John Brownlee, 88, is alleged to have carried out shocking campaigns of violence and torture against 35 schoolboys over a 20 year period while he taught at the capital’s Edinburgh Academy. Mr Brownlee is claimed to have assaulted the children, who are now all adults, by striking them with implements including a wooden bat called a Clacken, a table tennis bat, a snooker cue and a golf club.

The former teacher is also said to have choked several alleged victims by securing their school ties to a window blind and causing the tie to tighten around their necks. Further alleged abuse revealed in court papers state Mr Brownlee made children sleep in soiled bedclothes, ordered them to sit in freezing cold baths and punished them by making them dig in a garden without the proper clothing in cold weather.

Former teacher John Brownlee, 88, is alleged to have carried out shocking campaigns of violence and torture against 35 schoolboys over a 20 year period at Edinburgh Academy.

The court papers also allege he locked some boys in a garden shed for a prolonged time and on one occasion he made a boy remove his clothes and placed a hosepipe between the child’s buttocks and soaked him. The charges allege Mr Brownlee also punished children for suffering from an asthma attack, placed a boy’s head inside a locker and struck one pupil’s head with a cupboard door where the child lost consciousness.

Mr Brownlee is facing a total of 37 allegations including 20 assault charges, 16 assault to injury charges and one complaint of cruel and unnatural treatment, all alleged to have taken place between February 1967 and December 1987.

The former teacher, whose address was given as a flat in Trinity area of the capital, failed to show up in person when the case against him called at Edinburgh Sheriff Court today, Thursday, November 30. Lawyer Andrew Seggie, defending, told the court his client was unfit to attend court or to stand trial on the allegations due to ill health.

Prosecutor Graeme Clark said the Crown agreed that “John Brownlee is unfit for trial and the trial cannot proceed” after the Crown had received a medical report. Mr Clark said: “[The report states] that he is unable to participate in a trial, follow the course of the trial, take in new information and unable to keep concentration.

“He won’t be able to follow the course of trial and will be overwhelmed in the course of the trial and will display behaviours such as reciting Latin and football facts.”

The fiscal depute added all future hearings will be held in Mr Brownlee’s absence and an Examination of Facts hearing will be held next March that will run for around 15 days. Mr Clark said during that hearing witnesses will give evidence to the court regarding their experiences while attending the school but said “most likely the court will make no order”.

Sheriff Alison Stirling continued the case for the Examination of Facts hearing to take place.

Mr Brownlee was deputy head of the Edinburgh Academy primary school for 31 years and housemaster of Dundas House, the school’s junior boarding house, for 11 years in the 1970s and 1980s. The Edinburgh Academy is a private day school which opened in 1824 and the original building, now part of the Senior School, is located at the heart of the capital’s New Town at Henderson Row. The Junior School is a short walk away near to the city’s Royal Botanic Gardens.

Originally a day and boarding school just for boys, the school transitioned to fully coeducational where male and female pupils are educated together in 2008.