One of Scotland’s top private schools could face a corporate prosecution for negligence after a report uncovered damning evidence of abuse and paedophilia.

The Mail can reveal Lord Advocate Dorothy Bain, KC, is considering the ground-breaking move against Fettes College in Edinburgh, following the findings of the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry (SCAI).

Scotland’s top law officer is understood to have discussed the possibility of launching a case over safeguarding failings at the school where paedophiles preyed on pupils for decades.

The SCAI found the college repeatedly ignored complaints about appalling abuse, meaning even more children were targeted.

For decades, pupils at the famous school – which counts Sir Tony Blair as a former student – were regularly subjected to horrific ordeals, including sexual, physical and emotional abuse.

Survivors have met the Lord Advocate to discuss a corporate prosecution of the school, where annual fees cost up to £54,000.

If successful, it could be seen as a test case paving the way for other schools where abuse took place.

A source close to the discussions said: ‘Consideration is being given to a prosecution of the school as a whole, as a corporate entity, on grounds of negligence.’ 

The SCAI found one Fettes headteacher covered up the crimes of staff who had abused children, including those of ‘prolific abuser’ Iain Wares.

Fettes is the latest in a series of institutions found to have failed those trusted to its care.

Retired judge Lady Smith, the inquiry chairman, said the school repeatedly failed to act upon complaints and missed or ignored multiple opportunities to prevent ‘dreadful suffering’.

In a report published in January, she said: ‘Children were wholly failed by the school. Members of staff abused children from the 1950s to the 1980s.’

South African teacher Wares moved to Edinburgh from Cape Town in 1967 after resigning from a school there having been accused of ‘playing around with small boys’, Lady Smith’s report said.

He was referred to consultant psychiatrist Professor Henry Walton with a view to ‘curing’ him.

Lady Smith said: ‘He was not “cured”. He was and remained a prolific abuser of children.’

Former Fettes headmaster Anthony Chenevix-Trench, himself found to have sexually abused youngsters, ‘protected two, and possibly more’ abusers at the school, Lady Smith said.

A spokesman for the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service said it ‘would not be appropriate to comment’, when asked if a corporate prosecution of Fettes College would be pursued.

A Fettes College spokesman declined to comment.