Boarding-School Teacher John McKno Choked to Death on Breakfast at HMP Norwich After Abusing Five Boys, and a Victim Called It a Ring

NORWICH, ENGLAND — John McKno died on a prison wing with a breakfast stuck in his throat. That is the sentence every desk led with when Norfolk Coroners’ Court finished with him. It is the least important sentence in his file. He was a maths teacher who sexually abused boys at three boarding schools, pleaded guilty when a trial was about to start, and took 14 years. A former pupil told the BBC the abuse sat inside a ring. An ombudsman said the staff who watched him choke did not treat a choking as a choking. The inquest recorded a manner of death. It did not reopen the dormitories.

McKno, of Alby Hill in north Norfolk, taught at Beam College in Great Torrington, Devon, at St Michael’s College in Tenbury Wells on the Shropshire border, and at Kesgrave Hall School near Ipswich. All three schools later closed. Suffolk Police’s Operation Garford, built to investigate Kesgrave Hall, arrested him in 2014. Detectives then walked backward through his earlier posts. He was charged in March 2015. He denied the counts until the trial was due to open at Ipswich Crown Court. On March 1, 2016, he pleaded guilty to nine offences: indecent assaults, gross indecency, and serious sexual assaults, including buggery. Three further offences were left to lie on the file. Judge David Goodin told him to expect a significant term for grave crimes. On May 13, 2016, the same court gave him 14 years and an indefinite place on the sex offenders register. He was 70. Four of the five boys were under 16. One was under 14. The admitted offending ran through the late 1970s and the 1980s.

The BBC’s sentencing report and the Shropshire Star’s account of the same hearing put the schools in order. At Beam College the admitted counts covered the late 1970s. At St Michael’s, where he taught from about 1979 to 1985, he admitted gross indecency against a child under 14. At Kesgrave Hall, where he taught around 1986 and 1987, he admitted indecent assault and a further sexual offence against boys under 16. Detective Inspector Jim Gooding, the senior investigating officer, said the sentence was justice for victims who had waited 30 to 40 years. Gooding was right about the wait. He was not in a position to say the wait was over for every boy who had slept in those buildings.

One eye open

Lee Woolcott-Ellis was 51 and living in Kent when McKno was jailed. He had been at Kesgrave Hall from 1975 to 1980, before McKno’s own stint, and he helped police trace two of McKno’s Kesgrave victims. His description to the BBC is the line that should have led the 2016 coverage and did not. “I’ve said in court it was a paedophile ring — they all knew each other, took part in indecent assaults and followed the same modus operandi,” he said. “They learnt from each other — the corporal punishment was the same with implements crafted to inflict damage such as cooking spoons wrapped with insulating tape.” The sexual abuse, he said, happened in the dorms. “You were lying in your bed scared and you generally slept with one eye open.”

Kesgrave Hall took boys with behavior problems and above-average intelligence, sent by local education authorities, about 40 pupils and a dozen staff at a time. It closed in 1993 and later reopened as a hotel. The building’s second life does not retire the first. In 2012 The Guardian spoke with former pupils, including Woolcott-Ellis and Alexander Hanff, who described violence and sexual abuse and said a 1992 Suffolk police inquiry had been dropped. Hanff said he was told the force had been looking at 108 complaints. The force would not confirm the number. A member of staff, Hanff said, had lingered on his genitals while washing him in the showers when he was 12. That allegation was not charged against McKno. It is part of why Woolcott-Ellis used the word ring instead of the word teacher.

The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, chaired by Professor Alexis Jay, published its residential schools investigation on March 1, 2022. The investigation asked how schools answered allegations against staff, and what leadership, recruitment, and culture had to do with the answer. It did not need McKno’s name on a page to describe the pattern his victims had already described under oath: staff who copy one another’s methods, boys who are miles from home, and a police file that can sit for decades. The inquiry’s final report that October recommended mandatory reporting so staff would have to tell someone outside the building. McKno’s dormitory was not waiting on that statute. It was waiting on a detective, and the detective arrived after the schools had already shut.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZUuf60JnBY

A choking, a code, a radio turned down

He did not serve the 14 years. The BBC, reporting the inquest on March 31, 2021, said McKno, 74, died at HMP Norwich on September 29 of cardiac failure after choking on breakfast. The jury’s conclusion was misadventure. He had a number of health conditions. Metro and the New York Daily News printed the finding. A follow-up on April 22, 2021, covering the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman, placed the death in September 2019. Contemporary news copy that said “last year” pointed readers at 2020. The two public accounts do not print the same year. They do print the same mechanism: breakfast, airway, heart.

The ombudsman’s report, written by Sue McAllister and described by the BBC, is the part of the death that is actually about the prison. A healthcare assistant saw McKno turn blue and called for help on the radio but did not call a medical emergency code, which slowed the response. A nurse had her radio turned down and did not hear the first call. A second healthcare assistant had no radio at all, because she said she had a bad back. The lead nurse then directed staff not to start CPR because a do-not-attempt-resuscitation order was on the file. McAllister said that instruction was wrong. A DNACPR order is not a reason to stand back from a choking. The jury still found no evidence that CPR would have prevented the death. The Prison Service said that, while the ombudsman found his general care at least equivalent to what he could have expected in the community, staff had been given extra training on medical emergencies since he died.

Training after the fact does not give those five boys a longer sentence, and it does not test Woolcott-Ellis’s claim that the teachers learned from each other. A misadventure verdict is a narrow instrument. It answers how a body failed on a wing. It does not answer how many other men are walking around England who recognize the taped spoon and the unlocked dorm and were never offered a courtroom. Three counts were left on the file. The schools are closed. The staff lists are not a public exhibit.

The AEGIS Alliance will not eulogize a convicted child molester, and it will not dress a choking up as justice. He died in custody of a banal, badly handled emergency while a 14-year sentence still had years on it, and while a named survivor was still saying the abuse was a ring. The inquest closed the airway. It did not close the school. Related cases on this desk include Sarah Sands and the killing of Michael Pleasted, convicted pedophiles stabbed to death in British prisons, a baby abuser’s suicide in a UK prison, and the wider Crime News file.