Ex-City lawyer tells of torment over sex abuse by school priest

Patrick Raggett, who can be named for the first time, wept as he described how he tried to blank out what was happening to his young body.

At the age of 11 he would be bent naked over a desk by the priest who coached his football team.

"I was very interested in astrology and I would pretend I was in a solar system somewhere just so long as I was not there," he told the High Court in London.

Mr Raggett, now 50, is suing the Preston Catholic College in Lancashire, which he attended between 1969 and 1976. Four new witnesses, who claim they also suffered abuse at the college, have come forward since Mr Raggett's case was first revealed in the Evening Standard, the court heard. For decades after the abuse he shut out the psychological damage, it was claimed. A qualified solicitor with "undoubted charm and presence", Mr Raggett rose to be a litigation partner at City firm Pinsent Masons but was repeatedly sacked or rejected for jobs in Britain and abroad.

So in denial was he, that he invited the priest who had abused him at school to officiate at his wedding.

Eventually in 2005 he suffered a breakdown and through therapy was found to have a chronic form of post traumatic stress disorder which, he says, caused the collapse of his private and professional life.

The abusing priest was named in court as Father Michael Spencer, who died in 2000. "Under the cloak of priestly godliness and respectability he was an intrusive and brazenly abusive man," said Robert Seabrook, QC, representing Mr Raggett.

Spencer picked on the "pretty and cherubic" schoolboy and took pictures of him naked, measured his genital area, rubbed liniment into his groin and banned all the team from wearing underwear. Spencer also took showers with the boys to wash them and ordered his favourites to strip to check that "your back bits are properly connected to your front bits".

Priests at the school imposed rigorous discipline and old-fashioned standards, which included corporal punishment with a whalebone cane covered in leather.

Mr Raggett wiped away tears as he told how he vividly remembered Spencer ordering him to stand naked "and he had a tape measure inside from my genitals down to my feet - it was really scary". He continued: "I would block out being there. I would concentrate very hard on a part of my body. I can remember when he would have me bent over naked and he was eyeing my bottom and penis, I would press my right cheek as hard as I could against the desk and most of the time I would zoom off and be somewhere else totally."

Today's hearing was adjourned so that statements from the four new witnesses could be made available in court. As a result Mr Raggett decided to waive the right to anonymity granted to all alleged abuse victims in court proceedings.