When William Brydson was sentenced to 10 years in jail last week, Dawn Crawford and Michelle Kilpatrick allowed themselves a brief celebration.
As runaway children at a boarding school in Dumfries and Galloway in the 1980s, they had been preyed on by the man hired to look after them.
Brydson, the “head of care” at Monken Hadley in Newton Stewart, had attacked and molested pupils. But when he was originally taken to court in 2003, sexual abuse charges were dropped.
It was reported at the time, external that a “catalogue of blunders” by prosecutors led to court deadlines being missed.
Brydson did admit assault in 2003 and was sentenced to two years in prison, reduced to nine months on appeal.
More than two decades later, his former pupils faced him in court again and the 78-year-old was found guilty of a series of historical sexual offences, including rape.
Hand-in-hand at the sentencing, Dawn and Michelle were ecstatic. Yet the never-ending reckoning with their childhood trauma continued, barely interrupted.
“I still go to sleep and I’m back in the building with him and I can’t get away, ” Dawn tells BBC Scotland News.
“He’s got 10 years and I’ve had 40 years of it.
“It doesn’t add up. It’s not fair.”