Broadcaster Nicky Campbell shed tears on learning that the extradition from South Africa of retired teacher Iain Wares has been held up again.
Nicky, 63, said the continuing delay was heartbreaking for those waiting for justice after allegedly being sexually abused or brutally beaten by Wares in the 60s and 70s at his old school, Edinburgh Academy, and at nearby Fettes College. He challenged Wares, now 85 and living in a retirement community on the outskirts of Cape Town, to stop being a coward and to voluntarily come to Scotland to face justice.
Nicky said: “I wept when I heard the news of further delay. Wares has abused hundreds of young boys over a long period. I saw it. I know it. It’s prolonging the torture, like waiting to go up to his desk when we were children. This is heartbreaking for men whose lives he has scarred.”
The South African Ministry of Justice decided in the summer, after lengthy legal arguments lasting years, that Wares should be “extradited soonest” to face the many charges waiting in Scotland. But a single charge he faces of sexually abusing one pupil in South Africa is enabling Wares and his legal advisers to delay justice for his alleged Scottish victims.
A hearing that should have taken place last Tuesday – originally set for September and, at that time, continued from July – was postponed at the last minute because a lawyer taking part in the proceedings had become ill. The case will now call on March 6, next year but is likely to be continued well beyond that date, which is said to be causing severe distress to his alleged victim in South Africa.
Wares will be 86 on June 30 next year and every delay means it is less likely that he will ever see the inside of a Scottish court. He was described by Nicky as Scotland’s Jimmy Savile when the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry (SCAI) heard evidence about Wares’s alleged abuse of an unprecedented number of pupils at the Academy and at Fettes.
That description was followed by the revelation earlier this year that the Crown Office now has reports of alleged abuse from more than 120 former pupils. A warrant for his extradition was submitted based on 74 charges but many more alleged victims have since come forward and Wares could face some 130 charges on the longest indictment ever seen in Scotland – if he is eventually sent back.
Nicky and fellow members of a survivors’ group, comprising dozens of former pupils of the schools where Wares taught, know of others who claim they were abused by Wares but have chosen not to relive the horrors he imposed on them. Nicky said last night: “He allegedly abused thousands over his long career here and in South Africa. The South African government wants him gone, politicians want him gone, the people in his retirement complex where he is a pariah, want him gone, the Cape Town English-speaking community wants him gone.
“Why hasn’t he boarded a flight yet? This has been going on for almost eight years, adding insult to more than 50 years of injury. And it looks more and more like he’ll be allowed to die in South Africa.
“All we ask is a flight to Britain and a fair trial. If he’s found to be innocent he can fly home, get on with the rest of his life. We’ll pick up the pieces here. But it’s time to stop being a coward, Mr Wares. And whoever keeps delaying this, think of your children, your grandchildren. Think of yourself when you were nine.”
Wares denies all the charges he faces, despite admissions of paedophilia in his past. The SCAI heard last year that Wares travelled to Scotland in 1967 from his native South Africa to seek treatment for his paedophilia at the Royal Edinburgh Hospital.
The psychiatrist who treated him had been a family friend in Cape Town and encouraged him to go into teaching, describing Wares in medical notes as a “pleasant pederast”. Wares taught at Edinburgh Academy from 1968 to 1973, leaving with a glowing reference, after complaints of sex assaults on pupils.
Fettes then employed him for six years despite governors – including Ranald Maclean who went on to become a judge – knowing about his treatment for paedophilia and incidents at the Academy. Nicky was not abused by Wares but claims he witnessed him sexually assaulting a friend in changing rooms while they were in the junior school. Recalling that memory often provokes tears and Nicky says he can’t unsee the image.
He described the incident while giving evidence to the SCAI and told of being sexually assaulted by another teacher, the late Hamish Dawson, as well as brutal physical assaults he endured from other teachers. Nicky’s description of Wares as Scotland’s Savile helped to drive awareness of the scale of his alleged offending as a teacher in Edinburgh.
Nicky added: “Wares was given jobs as a teacher and didn’t have to wait for opportunities. All he wanted was laid on a plate for him, 10 and 20 at a time in his classrooms, and he had power and authority over them all.
“Even with more than 100 complainers, I’d say it’s still likely to be the tip of a vast iceberg because some people have probably closed down that part of their life and don’t want to reopen it.”
Neil Douglas, flew to Cape Town in April last year to attend a preliminary hearing in the South African case so he could look the former teacher, who he says abused him, in the eye. He claimed: “Wares repeated his behaviour over and over. And for every man who has come forward, there must be at least 10 who haven’t, because Wares was indiscriminate in his violent outbursts and sexual assaults.
“Many survivors simply do not want to relive the experience by reporting it to the police. I believe the scale of Wares’s offending is staggering and the sooner he faces Scottish justice the better.”
The SCAI was set up in 2015 and has been hearing evidence of institutional child sexual abuse since 2017, costing more than £88million to date. A letter sent to First Minister John Swinney last week, by 28 survivors of abuse in boarding schools, demanded he remove Lady Smith as chair.
It accused her of “thinly veiled favouritism” for those running private schools and of attempting to undermine whistleblowers who had tried to expose abuse at them. The inquiry has dismissed the allegations made against the chair, who by July last year had earned more than £2million for chairing the inquiry.
Swinney has indicated that the government cannot remove the chair, apparently forgetting that a previous chair, Susan O’Brien QC, had stood down in 2016, and that he said at the time that he had initiated steps to remove her.
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