Cat Hughes was just 15 when the headmaster of her private boarding school began sending her messages via Instagram.
The teenage schoolgirl wasn’t entirely surprised. She’d heard other female pupils at £37,500-a-year Ruthin School in Denbighshire, North Wales, talking about chatty texts they’d received from the principal, Toby Belfield, calling them ‘cute’ and ‘naughty’ and ‘gorgeous’.
And at first it seemed Belfield cared about her wellbeing. ‘I’m thinking about you. I just wanted you to know,’ he wrote in one.
When Cat was struggling to cope with problems at home, he even offered her a free boarding place at the co-ed school, telling her: ‘I’m your ‘father’ now.’
Toby Belfield, 47, (pictured) the principal of £37,500-a-year Ruthin School in Denbighshire, North Wales sent messages to 15-year-old Cat Hughes telling her she was ‘naughty’ and ‘cute’
So began the exchange of hundreds of messages, sent at all times of the day and night, over several months. Most were about school life and Belfield’s frequent trips abroad where he went to recruit wealthy overseas pupils.
But when Cat turned 16, the tone of the messages changed, shifting towards subjects such as sex and boyfriends and babies — even, on one occasion, the size of Countdown star Rachel Riley’s breasts.
The married 47-year-old told the teenager she was ‘naughty’ and ‘cute’ and looked like a ‘model’ in her school blazer and joked she was ‘breaking my heart’.
More, in a moment, of the barrage of disturbing messages sent by Belfield to Cat and other girls in his care — but given they first came to the attention of educational authorities as long ago as last May, the question being asked is why on earth he hasn’t been sacked.
Speaking exclusively to the Mail this week, a visibly vulnerable Cat said: ‘It is shocking he has not been sacked for what he has done. He has ruined my life.
‘He should be sacked. He knew I was vulnerable. At the time, school was the be-all-and-end-all for me. I was having problems at home and he offered me a free boarding place.
When Cat (pictured) turned 16, the tone of the messages changed, shifting towards subjects such as sex and boyfriends and babies
‘When he started messaging me, I thought it was weird but I thought I had to reply because he was my headteacher. I was scared he would kick me out if I blocked him.
‘School, my friends and teachers were my family at that time, I was scared he could take it all away.’
Today, the Mail can reveal that despite an investigation by social services — as well as two separate school inspections last November which concluded that pupils are ‘at risk of harm’ — a loophole in the law means only governors at the independent school are able to dismiss members of staff.
Ruthin’s governors, known as the ‘Council of Management’ (COM) and whose members include a retired doctor and a circuit judge, say they are co-operating with ‘ongoing external investigations’ and that ‘the principal has not been carrying out his role while these investigations are ongoing’. But they have yet to sack him.
Welsh education minister Kirsty Williams announced this week that, while she had ‘no powers to direct an independent school to dismiss a member of staff’, she would shut down the school, which has 360 boys and girls aged 11 to 18, if appropriate action is not taken by the COM.
So why hasn’t it?
Money plays a big part, according to one source at the school. Belfield has presided over a huge increase in funding, effectively doubling reserves to £9 million.
More concerning, perhaps, is the fact the Mail has discovered a family building firm run by the COM chair Julie Oldbury was paid £970,381 for renovation and building works at the school between August 2013 and August 2018. Mrs Oldbury, 61, is director and majority shareholder of Best Construction, which undertook the work.
According to the school’s publicly available accounts, filed with the Charity Commission, the work was put out to ‘competitive tender’ and ‘potential conflicts of interest’ addressed to ensure good value.The school insists Mrs Oldbury ‘was at no point personally involved in any decision to appoint Best Construction, or in any negotiations over the terms of the appointment’. The fact remains that Mrs Oldbury, an HR specialist, is among those who must decide whether Belfield should stay or go.
‘It beggars belief that he can still be in post,’ Cat’s mother Susan, an NHS speech therapist, told the Mail this week. ‘How can he be allowed to send inappropriate text messages to pupils, especially boarding pupils, some of whom are thousands of miles from home, without fear of reproach?
Cat had heard other female pupils at £37,500-a-year Ruthin School in Denbighshire, North Wales (pictured), talking about chatty texts they’d received from the principal
‘It’s a terrible loophole in legislation. It’s wrong. Because my daughter was at private school she had no protection or rights.’
Even at Ruthin, where staff were only told this month that Belfield is on a ‘leave of absence’, there is disbelief about why he has yet to be given his marching orders.
‘He needs to go and we can’t understand why he hasn’t gone,’ the school source said this week.
They said that for any other member of staff it would have been against the rules to send pupils messages via social media, but that Belfield, whose 62-year-old wife Barbara is a bursar at another private school in Shrewsbury, was openly doing it.
‘He said it was to do with his guardianship of the pupils and he needed to be able to contact them more informally. We assumed it was about work and test results.’
The hundreds of messages seen by the Mail make it clear that was far from the case. In one, sent the morning after a school dance, he laments to a pupil: ‘No photo of you in your lovely red dress!’ To another pupil he wrote: ‘To me you are extremely special, which is why you get away with so much.’
On another occasion Belfield, who had a strict ‘no relationships’ policy at the school and threatened to expel anyone who formed one, threatens to tell a girl’s father about his suspicions she is involved with someone and says: ‘I don’t want to see you with him.’
What he was trying to achieve with these messages is unclear but it is surely not the job of the headteacher to be sending messages of this type.
Belfield, who was also an organist at Roman Catholic Shrewsbury Cathedral until 2018, adds: ‘I worry, definitely, about you and sexual behaviour. You might need my support — and you shouldn’t risk not having it.’
Cat says that when she finally told a teacher about his messages, she was told: ‘It’s just Mr Belfield being Mr Belfield.’ Another told her to block him on social media
To another girl, he writes: ‘All the boarding staff have been told you are a potential sexual threat to young boys!!!! Your reputation is damaged at the moment. And that matters to me a lot.’
Cat Hughes says that at first she felt valued when Belfield started messaging her in August 2018, not long after she had moved to Ruthin, encouraging her to confide in him about her problems.
‘I’m the only person in the whole school for 100 per cent confidentiality,’ he wrote to her. ‘Because other teachers or staff cannot promise 100 per cent confidentiality. But as I’m in charge, I can.’
When discussion turned to whether or not she would get the GCSE results she needed to stay on for sixth form, he said: ‘I very much want you to stay and basically it is my decision. As I set the rules, I can break them if I want to.’
He added: ‘I am at the top of the tree. There is no one else for me to have to talk to.’
When she began to confide in him about her problems at home, he told her: ‘I care deeply about you and your future. And you need support and care and love.’
But the messages became increasingly confusing for the girl, especially when they arrived late in the evening or in the middle of the night, sometimes from halfway across the world during his numerous business trips.
When Belfield messaged her just a couple of minutes after midnight on New Year’s Eve last year, she found it ‘weird’ that he was thinking of her at such at time.
She says: ‘Many of the teaching staff were aware of the messages. Everyone knew he messaged his ‘favourite’ girls. But it was dismissed as ‘just Mr Belfield’ and we were told to ignore it. He has so much power, nobody wanted to rock the boat.
‘People were scared of losing their place at the school.
‘I’ve had nightmares about Mr Belfield and my mental health has got worse since I left school in May. He has messed with my head so much. Even if what he has done doesn’t meet the criminal threshold, it is a massive breach of trust. I feel so let down by the council of manage-ment, everyone at the school.
On one occasion, Belfield told Cat she would make ‘a terrible girlfriend’ because she is ‘far too demanding’ and that she should wait until she was 28 to get a boyfriend. He also wrote about being lonely on his trips abroad.
‘There are so many beautiful girls here but I’m faithful to my wife as I don’t believe in unfaithful behaviour and I know you approve!!!,’ he wrote while staying at the Ritz-Carlton in Moscow. He went on to say that when Cat got married: ‘I will be at the wedding. You will make a lovely bride. I will be sooooo proud. It will all happen for you,’ he wrote in another. ‘I know you believe and trust me. I’ll be checking you’re OK throughout this holiday. Plus I love teasing you.’
In another, he asks if she has an eating disorder because ‘you are a thin girl’, adding: ‘Although my opinion is that you look good.’ He says that because her weight is ‘natural and good’, ‘in the future I can take you out for dinner’.
Other topics he addressed included Cat’s ambition to be a midwife.’It seems absolutely disgusting and revolting to me,’ he wrote. ‘Babies are so annoying. None of them are cute but every parent thinks their own one is. I favour sterilisation.’
He added: ‘Any woman that has a baby and cannot properly look after it should be deported to another country and should be forcibly sterilised so they can’t have any more.’
Cat says that when she finally told a teacher about his messages, she was told: ‘It’s just Mr Belfield being Mr Belfield.’ Another told her to block him on social media.
She says that when she deactivated her Instagram account, Belfield sent the school nurse to tell her he needed to be able to have contact with her. I said that he could email me but the nurse came back and said it has to be WhatsApp so he can call you or Instagram.
‘I didn’t want to give him my number so I reactivated my Instagram account.’
Belfield grew up in Cornwall before graduating from Trinity College, Cambridge, with a maths degree in 1994. He began teaching a year later at independent Concord College in Shrewsbury. It was there he met his wife Barbara. They married in 2001. He became head of sixth form at Ruthin School in 2001. He was made principal in 2010.
When Cat finally left the school in May last year, Belfield was temporarily suspended while investigations were undertaken but returned to work in September. He hasn’t been seen at the school since November last year, when the school was inspected twice by the Care Inspectorate Wales and Estyn, the Welsh Ofsted.
Cat’s mother Susan, a former teacher, says that after seeing the messages which had been sent to her daughter ‘I called social services, the Care Inspectorate Wales, the Charity Commission, the Education Workforce Council and Estyn, everyone I could think of to ask why he hadn’t been sacked.
‘Social services explained that because he worked in an independent school the governors had to make that call and their hands were tied.’
She says she subsequently contacted the chair of the school’s Council of Management, Julie Oldbury, and asked her ‘How would you feel if it was your daughter?’
‘But all she kept saying was ‘no comment.’ ‘
The school source who spoke to the Mail said that, thanks to Belfield’s success at the school, he had become virtually untouchable — and that he was ‘a dictator who wouldn’t be challenged’.
The source spoke of the ‘complete control’ Belfield exerted over the school, particularly given his combined roles as both head and bursar.
‘Because he manages the money as well, he has control over everything,’ says the source. ‘He is like a kingpin between the Council of Management and the rest of the school and it was just him in the middle speaking for both sides. He has made himself indispensable.’
The inspection report by Care Inspectorate Wales last week concluded the school was being run by an ‘autocratic and controlling management’.
This week, Estyn also published a report of their findings after their ‘unannounced focused visit’ in November, saying the role of the principal ‘is not defined precisely so it is not clear to what extent the principal is exempt from specific guidelines and why this should be the case, how the principal is held to account and consequently what the principal can and cannot do’.
The Council of Management welcomed the publication of the reports and said in a statement that it ‘has been working tirelessly to ensure both reports’ recommendations are implemented and has been carrying out a root-and-branch strategic review of its safeguarding governance and safeguarding arrangements, and that is continuing.
‘The school is determined to ensure all appropriate steps are taken. In response to the Estyn report, the Council of Management produced a comprehensive action plan to address the shortcomings identified, and other areas of improvement. This was submitted to the Welsh government on January 17 for approval.’
Belfield appears to have relished the control he has exercised at the school. ‘I have complete authority,’ he wrote in one of his messages to Cat. ‘I can do whatever I like. I can go to any country I feel like. I’m creating a new school piece by piece. By the time I retire I will have created something forever — and I will be remembered for many years!!!’