Today, a former tutor at St. Peter’s Cambridge (1974-1976), Geoffrey Coker, was sentenced in Hamilton District Court to a prison sentence, following the guilty verdict delivered in October 2024 related to nine charges of historical indecency offending.

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Our School Trust Board attended the sentencing hearing. It was sobering for all of us to hear the survivors share their impact statements in court. We know that each of you in our wider school community will join us in acknowledging these alumni survivors for their courage in sharing the awful details of their abuse experiences at this very public trial.

Sharing their testimonies must have been an incredibly difficult experience. Each of these survivors was confronted with relentless, and at times, deeply hurtful questioning from the defence counsel as he tried to discredit their experiences. No one should have to face what they faced, but each alumnus did so with courage and conviction.  

In 2018, St. Peter’s made the decision to begin researching all notifications of abuse documented in our files since records began in the 1930s. It 2019, trustees contracted an independent clinical and forensic psychologist to review and scrutinise this documentation. The culmination of this research and review was the School Trust Board’s formal acknowledgement and apology to alumni survivors of abuse in November 2021.  

For these historical abuses, our school can not apologise enough. Our School Trust Board is deeply sorry for what the alumni involved in the recent Coker case, and every other historical abuse survivor, went through while at St. Peter’s. Each of these children should have been safe in the care of trusted adults, but they were not. This is something that our board profoundly regrets.

Today’s sentencing of this former staff member is a stark reminder of the responsibility St. Peter’s Cambridge bears to protect and support every student who learns and boards with us.  

Our School Trust Board wants to reassure our school community that we are committed to continuing to uphold the highest standards of student safeguarding. We are also committed to continue confronting historical student abuses with honesty, humility, and an unwavering determination to do better.

As a reminder, the confidential, independent Listening Service remains open to alumni survivors of abuse by contacting alumniassist@outlook.com.

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