A FORMER teacher whose sexual activities may have put his victim in a psychiatric hospital has walked free from court.

Nigel Christopher Stanbridge, 63, has now retired from the classroom, but, York Crown Court heard, while he was still teaching, he repeatedly abused a girl over a four-year period, starting when she was eight.

Abigail Langford, prosecuting, said the girl, now a woman, had been diagnosed with two psychiatric conditions, including post traumatic stress disorder, and when she was admitted to hospital in 2011, Stanbridge told her nurses he believed he may have contributed to her condition.

Staff told police, but the victim didn’t want to press matters. She was admitted to The Retreat psychiatric unit in 2014 and again Stanbridge revealed what he had done to her, believing that he was responsible in part for her problems.

Police did not take a statement from the victim on the advice of medical professionals that to do so would make the victim’s condition worse. But Stanbridge was prosecuted.

Giving him a two-year prison sentence suspended for two years, the Honorary Recorder of York, Judge Paul Batty QC said: “But for your disclosures there would not have been a case for you to answer. “

He read a letter from the victim, dated 2012, in which she forgave Stanbridge but wanted him never to work with children again..

Stanbridge, of Peckfield, Ripon, pleaded guilty to six charges of indecency with a child. He must go on a sex offender treatment programme, observe a nightly curfew and do 30 days’ rehabilitative activities as part of the suspended sentence. He was also put on the sex offenders’ register for ten years and made subject to a sexual harm prevention order for life.

York Crown Court heard that he met his victim outside school, and she was not one of his pupils.

For him, David Cammidge said Stanbridge was himself abused as a boy and that had affected him all his life.

Since the abuse of the girl, now a woman, he had done all he could to help her and it was his actions in telling the nursing staff that had revealed his activities. He had voluntarily taken early retirement.

As a result of his confessions, he was separating from his wife and was estranged from his children.