WARNING: This story contains details of sexual offences that some people may find upsetting.

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A former deputy head of boarding and charity boss at a private school in the Harrogate district has been found guilty of more than 40 sexual offences against female pupils.

Alexander Charles Ralls, 47, was also a deputy child protection officer at Queen Ethelburga’s School at the time of the offences.

He was accused of sexually abusing 20 girls over a three-year period and charged with 48 separate offences including 37 sexual assaults and 10 counts of causing a child to engage in sexual activity. He denied all the allegations. 

Yesterday, a jury found him guilty of all but four of the offences following a four-week trial at Bradford Crown Court. 

Mr Hampton said:

Mr Hampton said that before the offences came to light, Ralls, who ran his own charity, was regarded as a “man of unquestionable good, if not impeccable, character”.

He was deputy head of boarding for four years and, up until his dismissal in December 2015, was the school’s deputy designated safeguarding officer. 

Ralls, who lived in a flat in a female boarding house on the school premises, was also a qualified first aider at Queen Ethelburga’s, known colloquially as ‘QE’. 

He ran his own charity called Affecting Real Change (ARC) which “advanced the education and training of children, young people and adults”. 

Complaints over Ralls's behaviour

In November 2015, one of the victims made a complaint to the school about Ralls’s behaviour.

Ralls was suspended pending an investigation which found he had allowed pupils into his private quarters at Ethelburga’s which was against school policy. He was ultimately dismissed for “gross misconduct and inappropriate behaviour”.

The girl’s mother was told by the school that the matter would be passed on to the “relevant authorities”, but “nothing more seemed to come of matters” until a separate complaint was made to police by another child.

Police launched an investigation when more girls, now adults, spoke to officers about Ralls’s predatory and “weird” behaviour.

One of the abused girls said that “everyone loved Mr Ralls at that time” and that was the reason they didn’t initially make a complaint.

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Read more:

• ‘Predatory paedophile’ Knaresborough owner of Queen Ethelburga’s School jailed


• Harrogate businessman given suspended sentence for stalking ex-partner

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The jury found Ralls guilty of 43 of the 47 charges involving almost all the 20 girls who made complaints. He will be sentenced on July 28. 

The conviction comes after the school's former owner and ex-chairman of governors Brian Martin was jailed for more than three years in 2021 for sexually abusing two pupils. 

The “predatory paedophile”, who was 71 years old at the time of his trial at Leeds Crown Court, was convicted of indecently assaulting one pupil and sexually assaulting another.

Martin, of Ferrensby, Knaresborough, who had bought Queen Ethelburga’s and moved it from Harrogate to Thorpe Underwood, was cleared of six other child-sexual-abuse allegations at a previous trial in 2018.