A FORMER teacher who indecently assaulted two girls who were his pupils when he was headmaster of a primary school has been sent to prison for four years – the second time he has been jailed for sexual abuse.

In February 2001 Ian Glover, 63, of The Green, Lindal-in-Furness, was jailed for three years after being found guilty of 14 charges of indecent assault on a girl, who was aged ten and 11 when they happened in the 1990s.

And this week the ex head of Burton More-wood School, Burton-in-Kendal, was jailed again, for a total of 24 offences – also dating from the 1990s – some of which Judge Paul Batty QC described as being even more serious.

As unanimous guilty verdicts were delivered, Glover, watched by his wife Shirley from the public gallery, swallowed hard, and leaned forward to rest his forehead on the glass barrier at the front of the dock at Carlisle Crown Court.

The judge ordered him to register for life as a sex offender and banned him from working with children, the second time such orders had been imposed on him.

He described the offences as ‘the grossest breach of trust’ and told him: “The gravity of this offending cannot be over-stated. This was disgusting behaviour.”

Twenty-one of the charges were examples of how Glover had regularly abused the first girl, by molesting her as she sat on his knee, almost every week over a three-year period.

Two others – the most serious – reflected the way he stroked and kissed her during a school trip.

And one was in respect of a different girl, whom he assaulted by rubbing against her while supposedly massaging her shoulders after a practice for the school sports.

During the trial last week the first victim, who is now grown up, told the jury how he molested her, both above and below her clothing after telling her she was his ‘favourite’.

She said that on the school trip he had taken her upstairs, telling her she had been naughty.

A statement read to the court, which described the affect his behaviour had had on her, was described by lawyers as ‘harrowing’.

The second woman told how Glover had rubbed against her while comforting her after she became upset during school sports practice.

She told her parents about it but, though her mother confronted him, they took their complaint no further until police began investigating allegations afresh.

In evidence Glover described himself as a ‘tactile’ teacher and said that though he now regarded such behaviour as ‘inappropriate’, he had not at that time.

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