A FORMER boarding school pupil who claims he was sexually abused as an eight-year-old boy by his “violent” teacher has revealed cases of abuse across the country.

Journalist and author Alex Renton carried out an investigation into allegations of historic child sex abuse at private schools, including St Aubyns School in Rottingdean and Ashdown House in Forest Row, where he said he was abused.

Mr Renton’s research, which was the focus of last night’s ITV Exposure programme Boarding Schools: The Secret Shame, found a number of men complaining about a teacher called George Pilgrim, who worked at St Aubyns in the 1970s.

He interviewed one of Pilgrim’s alleged victims, only named as Richard, who said he was abused as a 10-year-old pupil at St Aubyns, which closed in 2013.

Richard said Pilgrim “turned into a little boy himself and he kind of walked off to his desk and cowered and made various excuses but it wasn’t good enough”.

He added: “It’s like having a toxin inside you isn’t it. It’s bound to have an effect.”

ITV’s Exposure found the new preparatory school that Pilgrim moved to and it confirmed he had arrived complete with a reference from St Aubyns.

The school also confirmed to ITV’s Exposure anonymously that it let him go two months later because he was abusing children in the classroom.

Pilgrim is now dead and police charges were never brought against him.

Mr Renton said that his old maths and history teacher, Thomas Keane, who is now dead, once sexually abused him in a classroom at Ashdown House.

Mr Renton said: “I remember very clearly the physical feeling of being pressed up against his sort of hairy tweed jacket while he had an arm round me and his other hand was going straight down the front of my corduroy shorts.

“And I remember quite distinctly being given the fruit gum afterwards which I knew already was what you got if you submitted to this.”

In 2013, a group of Alex’s former Ashdown House schoolmates went to the police about a different teacher from later in the 1970s, science teacher Martin Haigh.

Haigh was sentenced to 12 years in prison last March for indecent assault and gross indecency against four pupils at the school.

The Cothill Trust, which took over Ashdown House and St Aubyns after the incidents, extended its “heartfelt sympathy to anyone involved” and said the historic allegations are “utterly deplorable”.