The victims of a former high school teacher who groomed and molested five of his teenage students in the 1980s, stood up in court on Wednesday to address their abuser, recalling how his crimes left them scarred and damaged.

Jay Walsh, 79, a former drama teacher at Penrhos College, was given a 10-year-sentence on Wednesday after a jury found him guilty of 20 charges of sexual abuse against girls who, at the time, ranged in age from 13 to 16 years old.

Sitting with his eyes closed and head down, Walsh was addressed by two of his victims who tearfully read out harrowing impact statements to the court.

“If he had solemnly fulfilled his role as my teacher, the impact he would have had on my life would have been fundamentally different,” one said.

“He crossed ethical and moral boundaries, he inflicted an injury against me. I will not be able to tell the court all the ways he has damaged me.”

The woman said she went on to become a teacher herself, but suffered “trust issues, intimacy and self-esteem issues”, experienced depression and anxiety and left the teaching profession because she “felt like a fraud.”

“I thought I had made a good person do a bad thing,” she said. “I thought I was wrong and broken.”

The woman said she carried the guilt of what had happened to her “until the day he was arrested” and spoke about the relief of finally recognising she was not complicit in the actions of Walsh against her.