Mark Blacklock’s investigation into Brian Martin, the paedophile proprietor of a private school, was published on our website in February. A singularly astonishing tale, it’s the biggest story we’ve ever run. We asked Mark to tell us more about his five years of reportage on the piece.
The queue for taxis at York station was a proper doozy and would have tested the patience of someone far saintlier, with a long line of pupils returning from half-term pushing the wait time beyond 30 minutes. They were a mixed bunch in age and ethnicity, and all were wearing a uniform I recognised. I’d had a word with myself about not moaning, so when I eventually got into a cab, I said to the driver: ‘I bet you’re glad for the Queen Ethelburga’s business.’
His response was instant: ‘Don’t get me started on Queen Ethelburga’s.’ Here was a live one. ‘Why’s that?’ I asked. I buckled in and listened with increasing astonishment to what he had to say.
The taxi driver claimed that he’d worked for the taxi firm that had held the exclusive contract for ferrying QE pupils to and from the school, some ten miles outside of York. The work was all well and good, he said, but the firm had to kick back ten per cent of every fare to be permitted access to the grounds of the school for collection and drop-off.
I expressed incredulity. This did not seem standard practice for an independent school. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘he’s not your normal private school owner, that fella.’ I was about to inquire who that fella was when the driver went on.
‘That’s not all,’ he said. ‘It’s the same deal with takeaways. There’s a Chinese restaurant that all the Chinese pupils order from.’ They, too, he alleged, paid the school ten per cent on all orders delivered to the Thorpe Underwood site. Again, I expressed my shock at these practices. He explained that the owner of the school was a very sharp business operator, though not in precisely those terms. Almost as an afterthought, he added: ‘And he’s up in court for historic sexual offences.’ I may be softening the language for general consumption.
I thought I would take this last utterance with a pinch of salt: it seemed too much like the sort of rumour that is passed around taxi drivers between fares. Unlikely. I was sure I would have heard of this. Earlier that year I’d looked around QE with my family. We’d visited a number of schools and had found QE peculiarly alienating. I’d been curious to have a gander because I’d been at school myself with the son of a former headmistress, and her husband, the historian Lawrence James, had been a teacher at my place.
What we’d found at QE had been pretty weird. The place was soulless, more car park and sporting facility than school, and the staff we’d met had been singularly uninspiring, more like council officials than teachers. We had been given a promotional teddy bear. I remembered that we’d subsequently read a gossipy thread on Mumsnet about QE where numerous messages had been redacted under threat of legal action. We’d taken it as confirmation of our instincts and chalked off the experience as instructive.
