Sevenoaks School settles sex abuse case out of court
Thursday, November 07, 2013
Sean-Paul Doran

Sevenoaks School has agreed to settle out of court a claim that one of its high profile teachers, now dead, sexually abused a 12 year-old boy who was one of his pupils.

The claimant, now aged 48, was a pupil at Sevenoaks School between 1976 and 1983. He now suffers from a schizoid personality disorder with symptoms of Asperger’s Syndrome.

He alleges that the teacher, Gerd Sommerhoff, befriended him and invited him to his flat in the school grounds. It was there that the abuse is said to have taken place.

The claimant eventually reported his allegations to the police in November last year, partly as a result of the publicity surrounding the Jimmy Savile scandal. Previous allegations against Sommerhoff by another pupil were made last year.

The legal case against the school has been brought by Tracey Emmott, a specialist child abuse lawyer who also represented survivors of the Jersey Haut de la Garenne scandal.

“My client has had to live with this throughout his teens and adult life,”said Tracey Emmott of Emmott Snell Solicitors.

“He reported the abuse to a number of doctors over the years but no action was taken. It is a characteristic of child abuse survivors that they are left emotionally damaged and with an overwhelming sense of guilt at what took place.

“So reporting the abuse at all took some courage. In the end what gave him the impetus to bring it out into the open was the publicity surrounding the Jimmy Savile affair.

“Like so many others, the revelations had a cathartic effect on him and he felt free at last to tell his story to the police.

“As with Jimmy Savile, anecdotal evidence suggests that Sommerhoff’s abuse may have been suspected by those who worked with him. But also as with Savile, perhaps they didn’t act because we seem to find it difficult to believe that public acclaim might hide some very unsavoury characteristics.”

Sommerhoff was a distinguished teacher, inventor and philosopher and the great grandson of German composer Robert Schumann.

He fled from the Nazis to Canada in 1936, admitting that his ‘lifelong attraction to young men’ would have meant his certain imprisonment in his native country.

He was attracted to come to the UK to work at Sevenoaks School in what was considered a coup at the time.

Evidence presented in the claimant's legal proceedings against the school shows that he was particularly vulnerable to the effects of sexual and emotional abuse and felt stigmatized by his peers.

A spokesman for Sevenoaks School said: “The School can confirm that it was contacted by a former pupil about allegations of abuse said to have occurred over 30 years ago.

“Given this concerned events so long ago – and did not relate to any pupils or staff currently at the School – the matter was dealt with by the insurers from that period.”

Read more: http://www.sevenoakschronicle.co.uk/Sevenoaks-School-settles-sex-abuse-case-court/story-20048271-detail/story.html
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