Doctor's 35-year-old notes suggests Leeds monk on historic sex-abuse charges 'struggled with gay fantasies'

Michael James Callaghan is on trial facing 13 charges of sexual abuse, most of which relate to a boy who was a pupil at Ampleforth College in North Yorkshire in the 1990s.

Callaghan, of Kingsway Court, Harrogate Road, Moortown, worked as a housemaster at the fee-paying school at the time.

On day four of the week-long trial, a doctor’s note was presented to the jury dated October 1990, written by a practitioner in Oxford following an appointment with Callaghan.

The note, read out at Teesside Crown Court, said that at the time Callaghan had confessed to having “homosexual fantasies”, was “chasing after boys in the street” and had “difficulty in controlling the sexual side of his life”.

The note was presented to the court by prosecutor Mark McKone KC during his cross-examination of 71-year-old Callaghan.

Asked if he remembered disclosing those details to the doctor, Callaghan said he “really had no idea” what he told him, but denied chasing boys in the street.

However, he did say he was suffering from depression at the time.

Asked by Mr McKone if he had a sexual interest in adolescent boys, Callaghan told the jury that while working at a previous boarding school he had found some of the boys “extremely pretty”. He had previously told the jury that he was bisexual.

Having later moved to Ampleforth, Callaghan is accused of kissing the boy on multiple occasions, grabbing him by his bottom, making him rub his penis and even making the boy bite Callaghan’s penis through his clothing.

Known to the pupils at Father James, it is alleged he forced the boy to perform mouth-to-mouth resuscitation while pretending to have a heart attack, and would make him sit astride and simulate sex.

Callaghan denies 12 counts of indecent assault on the boy.

He also denies one count of sexual touching of a 17-year-old boy’s bottom at Ampleforth College in 2013.

Giving evidence, Callaghan said there had been a “sexual element” with the first boy, but only after he had turned 16 and claimed there was consent.

The trial continues.