Ex-teacher cleared of 18 sex charges

A former approved school choirmaster has been acquitted of 18 charges of committing sexual offences against boys over a 10-year period.

The jury failed to agree on verdicts on 10 other charges faced by former policeman Patrick Fitzgerald, 74, who was also a housemaster at Forde Park School, Newton Abbot, Devon.

Judge Graham Cottle told the jury at Exeter Crown Court that he discharged them from giving verdicts on the outstanding counts.

He told Fitzgerald that he will be told within seven days whether he will face a retrial on the counts which are still outstanding on the indictment.

Fitzgerald, of Gravesend, Kent, pleaded not guilty to all the 28 charges.

The offences are alleged to have been committed in the decade to 1967.

Fitzgerald was acquitted of two indecent assaults and four serious sexual offences against one alleged victim, and three indecent assaults and four serious sexual offences against a second.

He was also found not guilty of four indecent assaults and one serious sexual offence against a third alleged victim.

Still outstanding on the indictment are 10 charges of alleged indecent assault involving four other victims.

It was alleged by Neil Ford, QC, prosecuting that offences involved boys as young as 11-years-old at the Forde Park.