The married headteacher of a Catholic school has been jailed after attacking his colleague with a wrench in an act of “overwhelming sexual jealousy”. Dr Anthony John Felton, whose wife is head of religious education at St Joseph’s Catholic Comprehensive School in Port Talbot, hit his deputy with a wrench after suspecting him of sleeping with a younger teacher with whom Felton had recently had an affair and shared a child, a court heard. The 54-year-old father-of-three launched his attack on March 5, striking Richard Pyke, 51, five times at the South Wales school in footage that was captured on CCTV.
He pleaded guilty to attempted grievous bodily harm with intent at Swansea Crown Court and was sentenced to 28 months in prison and a restraining order. After carrying out the attack, Felton sent an email to all staff, admitting to his affair and the motivations for lashing out at Pyke, writing: “I’m sorry for the distress the rest of the day will bring.” The younger female teacher is a single mother in her 30s who began working at St Joseph’s in 2017, The Times reports.
The court heard that the 54-year-old had been driven by “a terrible jealous overreaction to what he perceived as a betrayal”, with the battering only broken up by the intervention of another staff member who heard noises from next door.
Pyke was rushed to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, but said in a victim impact statement that he had experienced “debilitating flashbacks” and “terrifying dreams” since being attacked.
“You had my complete trust in every way and you used that to manoeuvre me into a position of utter vulnerability with my back turned and facing a computer screen, and then you attacked me from behind with a metal wrench you had brought into my office,” he said.
“You should have been the one to protect me and instead you carried out a brutal and incomprehensible attack on my life.”
Felton, who was appointed head of the Catholic school in 2023 after 17 years of running the maths department, had suffered a “spectacular fall from grace, to say the least”, his barrister John Hipkin KC said.
“Anyone arming themselves with a weapon with a premeditated intention to cause someone injury is always a particularly grave matter, but for the headmaster of a school to take and use a weapon to badly injure their deputy is, I suspect, entirely without precedent,” Judge Jason Taylor KC concluded.
“The appalling example this sets to others needs no emphasis from me. Your marriage, your career and your reputation have all been irretrievably lost.”