Former teacher David Pickthall jailed for carrying out dozens of child sex offences over 40 years
A former teacher and choirmaster who carried out dozens of child sex offences over a period of more than 40 years has been jailed for 12 years.
Warning: This article contains details readers may find distressing
David Pickthall, from Brentwood, Essex, was investigated in relation to offences against 19 people in Brentwood and Upminster, east London, between 1980 and 2021.
The 66-year-old was working as a choirmaster in the London borough of Havering and as a teacher in Brentwood during some of the time period when the offences took place.
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Pickthall was made an MBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours List in 2015 for his services to education and charity, and had worked on a number of TV and film projects, including Wallace And Gromit.
But at Chelmsford Crown Court on Monday he was jailed after admitting 16 counts of indecent assault, 10 counts of voyeurism and three counts of making an indecent image of a child.
Pickthall initially faced 37 counts but they were condensed down to 29 in court - with police saying the charges still covered all of his offending against his 19 victims.
Judge Mary Loram KC, sentencing, told Pickthall: "You are without a shadow of a doubt a predatory and manipulative paedophile who has adapted his offending over the years."
She added: "If you hadn't been arrested you would have carried on."
Following his guilty pleas in October, Detective Constable Chelsie Stamford, from Essex Police, said: "I want to praise the strength demonstrated by the victims in this case for coming forward and telling us what happened to them.
"David Pickthall subjected them to an unimaginable ordeal that will stay with them for their whole lives."
According to a deleted online biography detailing his career achievements he was the "musical voice" of villainous penguin Feathers McGraw in the 1993 short film Wallace And Gromit: The Wrong Trousers.
The 66-year-old also worked on the post-apocalyptic horror film 28 Days Later and with a number of philharmonic orchestras.
Fiona Ryan, prosecuting, said Pickthall had admitted a "range of predatory sexual offences, primarily committed against students and former students of his at Brentwood School".
She said that "secretly he had a penchant for touching and spying on young adolescent boys and his desires were easily satisfied because of the positions he held".
The barrister said Pickthall would sexually assault boys "under the pretence it was part of the teaching style" and would "begin by tickling them under the guise of a mild punishment for getting something wrong".
He would progress to put his hands into their underwear, Ms Ryan said, adding that he gave students alcohol when they visited his home.
Pickthall would encourage students to stay in "what he called his guest suite", the prosecutor said, and he kept pornography there.
A student found a concealed video camera there, she said, which Pickthall recorded visitors with.
"He [Pickthall] selected and retained some of the most intimate images for his own sexual gratification," Ms Ryan said.
She said that in 2021, Pickthall used a fake social media profile - "pretending to be 17 initially" - and kept asking an underage boy for a photograph of his penis, which the boy eventually sent.
'It will always just haunt me forever'
One of his victims, who cannot be named for legal reasons and who was given the pseudonym Mark, said ahead of sentencing that Pickthall abused him from around the age of 12.
Mark, who is now aged in his 50s, said Pickthall - who had taught him music - groomed him and began to touch him inappropriately.
He said this went on for around four years.
"At the time the physical and the sexual side of it was really unpleasant but that isn't what stuck with me," said Mark.
"I would say that 90% of the damage he did to me was psychological.
"One of the things he said to me, and it will always just haunt me forever, is that... he said to me 'nobody will ever find you attractive or love you and you should be grateful for the physical attention I'm giving you because no-one else will give that to you'."
'Deeply ashamed'
Eve George, mitigating, said Pickthall "did see the good sense in pleading guilty at the earliest opportunity", before adding: "Perhaps the greatest punishment is his fall from grace."
Ms George read a statement written by Pickthall, which said he was "profoundly sorry and deeply ashamed of myself".
The judge said she had read Pickthall's letter "with some amazement", adding: "I don't know how any of the boys - now men - feel about hearing the repeated abuse that they were subjected to as students referred to as 'inappropriate interactions'."
