Child abuse case against Yorkshire teacher is dropped

The Crown Prosecution Service offered no evidence against Stephen Douglas-Hogg at the Old Bailey and formal not guilty verdicts were placed on three counts.

The move followed a collapsed trial in October last year, and the court was told there was no realistic prospect of conviction in relation to the evidence of three of the four alleged victims.

Douglas-Hogg, 52, of Filey, North Yorkshire, is serving a four-and-a-half-year sentence for sexual abuse of boys at the prestigious choir school in the 1980s.

Emma Smith, for the Crown, said that, as a result of the May 2009 conviction, other former schoolboys had come forward.

But there had been “evidential difficulties” and it was no longer in the public interest to proceed.