Teacher who groomed three schoolgirls and had porn-fuelled sex fest and romp on wife’s wedding dress is jailed for 12 years
Music master Simon Ball was found guilty of four counts of engaging in sexual activity while in a position of trust
A TEACHER who had an all-night "sex fest" with a student on his wife's wedding dress has been jailed for 12 years.
Music master Simon Ball, 42, has been convicted of grooming three girls, aged 13 to 16, before abusing them at a boarding school.
Judge Sean Enright slammed Ball for his crimes that were centred on "satisfying his fantasies".
Once described as a "talented" music teacher, Ball bedded one smitten victim in a chapel and in his bedroom before having sex on his wife's bridal gown on the floor of his spare room.
As the relationship continued he would sneak into her house and have sex in her bedroom with her parents asleep upstairs.
The Oxford graduate also had a threesome with two of the pupils — and took one to get a morning-after pill when a condom split.
Last week a jury found Ball guilty of four counts of engaging in sexual activity while in a position of trust.
Sentencing Ball at Peterborough Crown Court on Tuesday, Judge Sean Enright jailed him for five years for the Kimbolton offences and seven years for the Giggleswick offences, with the jail terms to run consecutively.
He told Ball: "These offences were all about satisfying your fantasies.
"There was never anything in it for the girls."
He added that Ball, whom he described as a "talented musician", would never work in a school again as a result of the "great harm" he caused to his victims.
The 42-year-old admitted sexually abusing one girl while he was director of music at Kimbolton School near Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire.
He was found guilty of sexually abusing three girls at his former school, Giggleswick School in Settle, North Yorkshire, following a nine-day trial.
During his trial Peterborough Crown Court heard one victim had a "sex-fest" with the teacher after watching pornography at his house.
She told police: "I remember him putting pornography on while we were in the living room and it was just like, it was just a sex fest. It was sex all night.
"There was a time, I think it was that night and this is going to make me feel and sound awful.
"He asked me to have sex on his wife's wedding dress and we did. He got it out and he laid it on the floor and we had sex on top of it and he put it back in the cupboard."
The girl, who was convinced she loved Ball, continued: "I just remember the whole way through the relationship I hated his wife. I absolutely hated her."
The victim also told how she was "jealous" when he started foreplay with her pal then joined in with a threesome when he beckoned.
His then wife, Hannah Atherton, 40, told the court how her husband had asked her to lie to police and tell them she'd thrown her dress away.
She also said how the couple split up after she came across a text from one of his students when she had gone back to the house and found his phone on the side.
Ball left the school amid a probe into his conduct but he was given a positive reference and got a job at a Cambridgeshire school only to be suspended following fresh claims.
Ball was found guilty of four counts of engaging in sexual activity while in a position of trust.
He had previously just admitted five counts of sexual activity by a person in a position of trust.
The jury was unable to reach a verdict on four further counts relating to Ball's time at Giggleswick School, and the Crown Prosecution Service did not wish to proceed to a retrial.
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