Michael Higginbottom, 76, is said to have targeted his victims while they were pupils at the now closed St Joseph’s College in Upholland, Lancashire, in the late 1970s and mid-1980s.
Both complainants said they were abused by Higginbottom in his private living quarters at the boarding school for boys aged 12 to 18, Burnley Crown Court heard.
Opening the case, prosecutor David Temkin said: “The boys were not there at the same time. They didn’t know each other then. They don’t know each other now.
“Despite that, their accounts – if true -demonstrate that they had very similar experiences, at around the same sort of age, in the defendant’s private quarters.
“They were both abused by this defendant – regularly, systematically and horrifically. They were both threatened with violence and both were struck with a strap or a belt.
“The prosecution say that the defendant must have thought these boys had not said anything to anyone. However, in recent years each of them came forward independently with their separate but similar allegations and the defendant’s past had finally caught up with him.”
The court was told the first complainant attended the college in the late 1970s because he had decided to become a priest.
He told police that St Joseph’s was a “cold, dark and forbidding place” and for him it was the venue for “mental, physical and sexual abuse”.
Higginbottom – a…
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