Teacher Terence Houlihan admits abuse of pupil, 15

Terence Houlihan, 64, had taken the teenager with him to stay at a guest house when he went for a job interview in Kent.

Prosecutor Rachel Roberton said that the teacher had formed “a good relationship” with the 15- year-old at a school for hyperactive children in Waterlooville because he excelled at sport. He took the pupil with him days after leaving the school, and indecently assaulted him while they were both naked in the same bed.

The youth told his mother what happened on his return from the trip and she told him to go the police but he declined. He changed his mind after he and his partner had a baby last year and then said he wished that he had reported the incident a long time ago.

Houlihan, of Corsair Drive, Dibden, admitted indecent assaulting the youth in 1991 and was placed under supervision for three years with a condition that he attends a sex offenders’ treatment programme.

Under the terms of an indefinite sexual offences prevention order, he is also disqualified from working and training with under-18s and cannot be left alone with them unless supervised.

Ordering him to pay his victim £2,000 compensation within three months, Judge Gary Burrell QC said that the offence was a gross breach of trust and he still represented a serious risk to children because his behaviour was “manipulative”.

As Houlihan’s victim sat in the public gallery at Southampton Crown Court, the judge explained that he could have been jailed but because the sentence would have been for only a few months, he would not have qualified for the treatment he needed inside prison.

For Houlihan, David Jenkins said that he had been abused by a priest as a youth but that was no excuse for his behaviour, which he regretted.

He no longer taught and had no contact with children, he said.

The court heard that Houlihan had been jailed in 1993 for 18 months for three sex offences against two girls.