Edward, which is not his real name, said he met Pickthall when he was three and the abuse began when he was a schoolboy aged around 12 or 13.

He used to go to Pickthall’s house for private piano lessons, where much of the abuse took place.

“I saw him very much as a friend, he was someone I would go back to quite often on a Saturday night.

“We’d get pizza and I remember drinking a lot of whiskey there and then he’d take me home on Sunday and stay for Sunday lunch, that was the level of trust he had.”

Edward said: “You’d go over there and he’d put porn on the TV and then he’d sit next to you and then he’d feel like he was waking you up watching it, which was always a bit uncomfortable.”

Edward said he saw Pickthall put his hands down the pants of some of the other boys and called it “a tickle spot”.

“He took one at me and I hit him.”

“(It’s) very strange looking back because it’s incredibly wrong. Until you see it with grown-up eyes, you don’t necessarily see it.”

Edward said he was always a scholar and went on to have a successful career and a family of his own.

He said Essex Police contacted him in 2021.

“Part of the reason I hadn’t come forward, with all this grooming, is that he was kind of a friend. So it’s very strange to start telling stories about a friend.

“But then you review all of this with an adult’s mind and you realize that he was anything but a friend.”