A MUSIC teacher who died while serving an eight-year jail sentence for raping a pupil has been cleared posthumously by the Court of Appeal.

Darryl Gee was convicted in 2001 on the word of his accuser about incidents that she claimed happened more than a decade earlier, when the woman was 11.

Mr Gee, who always protested his innocence, died aged 55 in his cell in Armley prison, Leeds, from an undiagnosed blood cancer a month after his second appeal was turned down in 2002. He had served 18 months.

His mother, Molly, 88, waged a five-year battle to clear his name, which ended with the decision of the Court of Appeal in London to quash the conviction. Lady Justice Smith said that expert psychiatrists had concluded that the alleged victim’s claims were unreliable and had become “more florid” since the trial.

A schools union said that the case underlined how vulnerable teachers were to malicious allegations from pupils that could wreck their lives. The Government issued guidance last year designed to speed up investigations by police and local authorities into allegations of abuse.

Mrs Gee told The Times yesterday that her son was physically disabled and would not have been capable of committing the alleged acts. Mr Gee, from Huddersfield, was born with spinal deformities that made it difficult for him to balance and to co-ordinate his hands.

“The whole thing has been utterly farcical and tragic. My son could not climb the stairs without holding on to the bannister. He certainly could not have raped anybody,” she said.

“[He] was always quite convinced he would be cleared. He would tell me that it would all work out. But he died just after the second appeal was lost. His faith in the system had been totally betrayed.”

Mrs Gee said that her husband Kenneth sank into depression and died seven months later, shortly after the couple’s diamond wedding anniversary.

Their son, in 20 years as a supply teacher, gave music lessons to hundreds of children without any complaints until he was accused by the woman in 1999 of rape and indecent assault at a Huddersfield school a decade earlier.

The woman made similar allegations against another man, John Hudson, who was jailed for 12 years at Leeds Crown in 2000. Mr Hudson’s conviction was quashed by the Court of Appeal last year after a psychiatric expert concluded that his accuser’s recollection of abuses was “implausible”.

A jury convicted Mr Gee by a majority verdict of rape and indecent assault in January 2001. Mr Gee and Mr Hudson shared a prison cell for a time.

“It all boiled down to one girl’s word against [my son’s] and the jury believed her,” Mrs Gee said.

The Court of Appeal awarded Mrs Gee more than £62,000 in costs at the hearing last month. The appeal was heard after the Criminal Cases Review Commission asked a psychiatrist to report on Mr Gee’s accuser. The study cast doubt on the mental state of the woman, now 26. The judge said that she had made no mention of being abused by Mr Gee in recent statements.

Chris Keates, general secretary of the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers, said: “This is an extreme and tragic illustration of the consequences of malicious allegations and underlines the need for these new procedures.”

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