DC Alice Hornsby Northants Police after the sentencing of Robert Gould

Former teacher Robert Gould convicted of 29 sex offences following a trial at Northampton Crown Court has been sentenced to 26 years in prison.

Transcript

00:00I feel great, I feel overjoyed, the sentence was absolutely fantastic, yeah I'm really

00:07really pleased with the length of the sentence.

00:08Are you surprised by the length of the sentence?

00:11A little, not that I think it's unjustified at all, but I am surprised but like I say

00:18extremely pleased and I think it is deserved.

00:22And how would you describe your witnesses, the victims, what would you say about them

00:29and their coming forward?

00:31Yeah, they're extremely brave, right from the very first report we had to the very last

00:37report, they've been absolutely amazing and we couldn't have done this without them.

00:41Like I said, a lot of them had buried this for 50 plus years, to then have to come forward

00:50and speak about it again, very very hard, so yeah I want to thank them all for coming

00:55forward and yeah there are no illusions, we couldn't have done this without them.

00:59And how difficult was the investigation?

01:01I mean, it's 50 years ago, how difficult was it to get it all together?

01:06Yeah, obviously with the passage of time we lose certain bits of evidence and you have

01:13to think outside the box a little bit, but you know, people's memories when something

01:18traumatic happens to them doesn't really falter, it doesn't really change, so generally the

01:24evidence of the actual offences we got were actually really quite good and like you say

01:30we had to think outside the box a little bit of gathering all the other evidence around

01:35speaking to people that weren't necessarily victims but were the witness to some of the

01:40things he did as well, just to build that bigger picture.

01:44And I've spoken to some of the victims and they really didn't want, they didn't really

01:50want to bring it back out of their minds did they?

01:53No.

01:54It's been so traumatic for them, how has it been for you?

01:59Yeah, it's an emotional rollercoaster, you know like you say you're talking to people

02:04that are talking to you about things that they don't really want to talk about but all

02:08of them had this sense of it's the right thing to do and actually if I can help someone else

02:16get the justice that is deserved then they were more than happy to help.

02:21And the judge had some very glowing words for you at the end for your hard work.

02:25Yeah, yeah I'm very very grateful for that recognition from the judge and council.