by A former teacher and choirmaster, who is also a musician and has worked on TV and film projects including Wallace and Gromit, has been jailed for 12 years for child sex offenses involving 19 victims and which lasted more more than 40 years.
David Pickthall was awarded an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honors List in 2015 for services to education and charity, and has worked on a number of television and film projects.
A since-deleted online biography listing his career achievements revealed that he was the “musical voice” of feathered penguin Feathers McGraw in the 1993 short film Wallace And Gromit: The Wrong Trousers.
The 66-year-old, of Ingrave Road, Brentwood, Essex, worked on the post-apocalyptic horror film 28 Days Later and with several philharmonic orchestras.
Sentencing her at Chelmsford Crown Court, Judge Mary Loram KC told Pickthall: “You are a predatory and manipulative pedophile who has adapted his offending over the years.”
She added: “If you hadn’t been arrested you would have carried on.”
The judge sentenced Pickthall to 12 years in prison, with an extended license period of four years, and also made him subject to a sexual harm prevention order.
The defendant, who glared at the judge during the sentencing, then slowly put on his jacket before being led to the cells.
He admitted at an earlier hearing at Colchester Magistrates’ Court to 29 child sex offenses involving 19 people and spanning more than 40 years.
The crimes were committed between 1980 and 2021 in Brentwood in Essex and Upminster in east London.
The court’s public gallery was filled with victims and their supporters who came to see Pickthall face justice.
The judge said, before she began sentencing, that “there can be no sentence that adequately reflects their (the victims’) experiences”, adding: “It is not a quantification of their distress.”
Fiona Ryan, prosecuting at Monday’s hearing, said Pickthall had admitted “a range of predatory sexual offences, mainly against students and former students of his at Brentwood School”.
She said he “secretly had a knack for hooking up with young boys and spying on them and his desires were easily satisfied because of the jobs he had”.
The barrister said Pickthall would sexually assault boys “on the pretense that it was part of the teaching style” and would start “by tickling them under the guise of mild punishment for doing something wrong”.
He would put his hands in their underwear, Mr Ryan said, adding that he gave alcohol to students when they visited his home.
Pickthall would encourage students to stay in “what he called his guest suite”, the prosecutor said, and kept pornography there.
A student found a hidden video camera there, she said, with which Pickthall recorded visitors.
“He (Pickthall) selected and kept some of the most personal images for his own sexual gratification,” Mr Ryan said.
She said Pickthall used a fake social media profile in 2021 – “pretending to be 17 at first” – and asked a boy under his age for a photo of his punishment, which the boy eventually sent.
One of his victims, who cannot be named for legal reasons and has been given the pseudonym Mark, said before sentencing that Pickthall abused him from around the age of 12.
Mark, now in his 50s, said Pickthall – who had taught him music – groomed him and began touching him inappropriately.
He said this went on for about four years.
“At the time the physical and sexual side of it was very unpleasant but that’s not what stayed with me,” said Mark.
“I would say 90% of the damage he did to me was psychological damage.
“One of the things he said to me, which will haunt me forever, is… he told me ‘no one will find you attractive or love you and you should be grateful for the physical attention you are getting. I give you because no one else will give it to you.”
He said he went to the police in 2021 because the “right thing to do was to talk about it and hopefully stop any other children or their parents from being put through this ordeal”.
Mark said at the time he didn’t think he would be believed.
“Pickthall clearly had two separate lives,” he said.
“In the eyes of the public he was a highly respected teacher, an excellent musician, he gave concerts, wrote scores for household names such as Tracy Beaker, Julian Fellowes, Paul O’Grady.
“I always remember when I went to concerts where he was playing he would often be the conductor and at the end of the concerts the audience would give him a round of applause.
“There would be a standing ovation and he was standing there starting this tribute to him.
“It was very difficult to deal with him because I knew he was a monster behind closed doors.
“He created this aura that he was so respected, that he was awarded for his commitment to charity, education, he even received an MBE from the late Queen Elizabeth.
“It’s very difficult to deal with the fact that he could create a public perception of himself by hiding what he was doing in private.”
Pickthall admitted 16 counts of indecent assault, 10 counts of voyeurism and three counts of making an indecent image of a child.
Eve George, mitigating, said Pickthall “saw that it was good sense to plead guilty as soon as possible”.
She said: “Perhaps the greatest punishment is a fall from grace.”
Ms George read a statement written by Pickthall, who said he was “very sorry and very ashamed of myself”.
The judge said she had read Pickthall’s letter “and I was shocked”, adding: “I don’t know how any of the boys – now men – feel about the repeated abuse they were subjected to as pupils called ‘ inappropriate interactions. ‘.”
