Former piano teacher cleared of having sex with boy pupil

The man claimed to have repeatedly had sex with Fiona Carrier at her Goring home when he was a 14-year-old pupil at Blue Coat School, Reading.

But jurors at Oxford Crown Court rejected his account, finding Carrier, 61, not guilty of five counts of indecent assault on a male person on Wednesday afternoon (June 7).

Carrier, who was known by a former marital name of Wiggins at the time of the alleged offending, always denied having sex with the boy.

But from her first interview with detectives, she accepted having kissed the child and that she had what was described as a ‘fumble’ with him; although he denied the incidents she claimed had happened.

She pleaded guilty at the magistrates’ court to indecent assault and will be sentenced on July 6.

Granting her conditional bail and ordering a pre-sentence report from the probation service, Judge Maria Lamb warned: “It’s clear custodial sentences are very much at the forefront of the court’s consideration.”

The defendant held a wooden crucifix in one hand and a pair of glasses in the other as she gathered her belongings and left the dock.

Earlier, she had stood stock still at the back wall of the dock, flanked by a custody officer, as she listened to each of the not guilty verdicts being read out. Her composure faltered only when the foreman gave the final verdict, clearing her of wrongdoing.

Fiona Carrier outside Oxford Crown Court Picture: Oxford Mail (Image: Newsquest)

Opening the case last week, prosecutor James Keeley told jurors that the alleged sexual interaction between the defendant and the boy followed the ‘same ritual’ at her home: “Music, wine, food, then ending up in the defendant’s bedroom.”

He said: “The defendant would tell the complainant that age was no barrier to intimacy and the lessons he was receiving, that she was giving him in her bedroom, was a privilege and what he was learning would stay with him for the rest of his life.”

Initially, it was said that the teacher-and-pupil had sex eight times, only for the number of alleged encounters to fall to four after the evidence was given to the jury.

Closing Carrier’s case to the jury on Tuesday (June 6), defence barrister Jack Talbot asked the jury to consider the complainant’s account was inconsistent with itself, inconsistent with the evidence of other witnesses, and, finally, that it was ‘inconsistent with reality’.

It was not for the defendant to prove the complainant was lying or give reasons why the allegations were false, he said.

But Mr Talbot suggested that the boy – now a man – was someone who ‘didn’t like to be challenged’. He suggested that the complainant had come to Carrier's home asking to lose his virginity but had been sent on his way. 

“Isn’t this about rejection, ultimately? About him being rejected,” Mr Talbot said.

“It amounts to this, members of the jury. All of the other witnesses in this case, I would suggest, have shown Fiona Carrier and not [the complainant] to be the truthful narrator.”

He said: “The prosecution have opened and in fact now close this case on the basis that Mrs Carrier has sought to downplay her actions, to minimise what she has done. In effect, to save her own skin.

“Does that sit easily with what you know about her and her approach to this case in general?

“A woman who walked into her police interview, gave an account, [and volunteered] that she had sexual interaction with a teenage boy; conduct that was not even alleged by [the victim].

“Who for two decades has, she says, tortured herself on a rack of self-loathing and emotion, who had to have counselling to deal with the dreadful enormity of what had happened.”

He said that many people ‘carry secrets in our lives’ and had ‘made mistakes’. “It is how we deal with our mistakes that is the important thing and without being too moralistic about it, whether we can find it in ourselves to take responsibility for our actions.”

Carrier, of Bucklebury, Berkshire, will return to the crown court next month to be sentenced for the sexual activity with the then pupil that she admitted in the magistrates’ court.