A Talk with Charles Spencer About Childhood Sexual Abuse

hello Charles Spencer I'm very delighted to have you on our therapy works podcast I'm actually a bit nervous because I haven't had a conversation or a um in a way a session like this before but for those of you those listening who don't know you're an author you're a journalist you're a broadcaster a podcaster a British peer and you're the younger brother of the late donana princess as well correct do you want to add to that list well I think that's enough isn't it thank you my memory is that you and I met through your sisters through Danna and then through Sarah and Jane after she died yes but we we've sat next to each other but I haven't known you well so this is like I haven't ever really met you absolutely right and right to establish that yes and what I um always ask my guests on this podcast is is there a particular challenge that you are facing or have faced well right now yes it's it's the very uh well for me the unique challenge of bearing my soul to the world um so I lived with a secret for a very long time um that some people knew about because they had a similar one but I went to a particularly abusive uh boarding school between the ages of 8 and 13 um um it's an endless emotional and physical abuse uh but the thing I hadn't really shared before was also sexual abuse but to be honest it's it's extraordinary to open up about this and today is the first day really that it's been public knowledge um because I now realized that there were other people suffering similarly who haven't had a voice or chosen to keep it secret and they seem to be sort of relieved so I have a that particular challenge but I seem to have some allies which is very nice and there is something particularly contaminating and kind of wounding of your soul when you hold a secret that she feels shameful like there's something wrong with you because that's what you feel as a child when you're physically psychologically and sexually abused and yet it's impossible to kind of stand back and look at that as an adult without somehow feeling that there's something wrong with you because that's the terrible thing about abuse is that when you keep it secret it does sew into your kind of being this this feeling of wrongness well it's very interesting you say that because there is a phrase I write in the book where I say you know this this institution 50 years ago uh really sewed demons into the lining of our Souls it made us flawed human beings afterwards but as you rightly say sort of floundering under the misunder understanding that somehow we were responsible I it's been fascinating to me to realize how deeply buried all this pain has been I've heard from a well I say a boy he's 60 something now but he was at the school with me and he wrote to me last week to say thank you and uh you know he he went to University with the girl who then became his wife and he said this is the first time he's ever spoken to her about it and they've just sat there crying for an hour and so God so heartbreaking it is and then I had a great contempary in fact he's one of the lead characters in the book with me I everyone's got a false name in my book but he's called William Purifoy in the book and he was begging me not to write it because it's too painful for him and he didn't want it all opened up and then he wrote last night was so grateful and he's still got scars on his buttocks from beatings in in 1977 so goodness knows what scars he's got on his soul as well do you want to give us some of the kind of details I mean for me it was one of the most painful books I've ever read and I've read a lot of painful books it was you write beautifully and the the sort of searing trauma memories are so clear I felt like I was in that truly horri horrendous school made well with you but do you want to tell us some of the incidents that happened that particularly stand night so people have an idea of what you're talking about this isn't just a sort of slap on the bottom with the slipper no well luckily I have done Decades of therap I have engaged in decades of therapy so I sort of can tap into this from the adult perspective but I I suppose the most chilling thing about arriving at a school like that when you're seven or was the very quick realization that there was no one there to help you no saviors there were no saviors at all I know this may sound genderist but there wasn't a single warm female human in the staff and so you're left with some pretty Grizzly men um I call the book a very private school because that's very relevant very clever title so they the head master was definitely a sadist pedophile and he had ultimate power he saw to it that the governors had no ever I I didn't we never saw a governor come into the school parents weren't allowed inside the school buildings and he closed it down and he was a terrifying pulsing Menace through my five years there I never saw him smile unless it was to the parents when they're collecting the boys or whatever the whole school eight I mean I just I think the whole school was predicated on the the demand he had to have a at least six of us 70 odd boys delivered to him for beating on a nightly basis when he would be aroused physically aroused and and then private the most painful thing was learning about friends of mine who I adored you know we were like brothers and I didn't know they were being secretly molested in the night Etc and then a sort of almost a dezian cast of baddies the henchman yeah there's a there was one who was a very he's hiding in plain sight but because he was an honorable it was honorable Henry mord people thought he must be okay I think the parents thought well he's all right he's one of us but he was terrifying um I mean he beat a boy unconscious with a window pole and he almost killed a boy in the swimming pool yeah and I mean really extraordinary I mean this is violence that is just beyond comprehension is it yes with people who are meant to be in local parenes yes that was the most extraordinary thing I think the big the penny drop for me in my early 40s when I went to do a thing called the Hoffman process which is really looking at your childhood I think and letting go of your childhood and I mentioned my years at maidwell as a sort of Sideshow actually to the therapist who was in charge of me and he got me talking about it and then he asked me to say one thing that I'd never told anyone before and I told them I've been sexually abused as a child and then we we got into the whole subject of maidwell and I suppose he then gave me the devastating news that the Headmaster was my surrogate father oh je and abuse is at its worst when it's with people who you're meant to be able to trust yes I I agree with that to and as you're speaking I'm so aware that what you call as fent traps of trauma that trauma has no sense of time no you're 59 and in that moment yes you were eight years old in the constant threat from a monster yes I suppose we all had to find a way through it mine was to become very angry actually CU I knew although I was eight and 9 10 11 12 I and I didn't know what was wrong I knew something was really really wrong when I was being sexually abused for a year at the which is a sexual trauma because it 11year old it completely blows your you can't tolerate that kind of sexual excitement at that age no there's a reason why it's illegal and it's extraordinary to me that you know I'm sure this is I I haven't really spoken to many people children sorry people who are abused as children to be honest but certainly for me it was so confusing because it was so well it was I didn't I couldn't put a thread through it I didn't know what it was and yet it was thrilling and dark and mysterious and I I I think I instinctively knew it was wrong but I didn't know how wrong and I didn't I didn't know sex abuse existed obviously I was so young the worst part of this well the most jolting part of writing this book and it was it's been hell to write really was the most extraordinary incident which was right at the end when I decided to do something completely different I just sent the manuscript in and I at at my family's home there the curator was moving some books and I thought I'd go and join and do something completely different and on a high shelf I pulled out a tiny book and it was my diary from 1976 and the abuser had written a message inside it to me and I nearly fell over the fact that I literally sent the book in an hour earlier my God and I was rocked On My Feet by this female writing she because I was abused by a female member of staff and it and I hat she was called please which is there's something in that which is particularly repellent yes all the female members of staff had to be referred to as please it was meant to instill good manners into us and this um woman who had been abused me wrote in my diary me me which I hate because it's possessive it's knowing and it's hiding you know it's almost like me therefore you're mine um me I don't even need to say who I am because I'm so powerful in your life and me because I know I'm a pedophile I'm not going to put my name down but then her address and telephone number for some reason this adult wanted to stay in touch with an 11-year-old boy it's interesting one of the messages I got last night was from a friend of mine and he said he had always been aware you know he was a le as well he was aware of the focus she had on me and he said he was jealous of it at the time which just shows how we were all just desperate for affection desperate for you know female warmth and and also how unknowing we were you know he was jealous of me being abused because it was attenion yes probably in a in a a sort of tundra of aat you only lived under threat so someone who was warm she was very clever because she she groomed you totally groomed me she seemed to giggle at the monstrousness and the absurdities of the other members of Staff with me so she was like on your side yeah yeah and then it just progressed really and it was devastating do you know she was so cunning she had three or four of us who she was abusing and she used to sort of Peel us off from the rest of the school and take us into a a room at the top of the school called the music room where no other members of Staff ever went and we had play our pot records or whatever and then you could tell when she suddenly decided one of us was out a favor she'd literally turn her back on that one and that meant none of us could talk to that person he was uh ostracized until she turned on the the beam of her affection again and that was a devastating feeling and then at the same time total psychopath yeah well she I don't know you would know and then and then on top of that she um manufactured in my I believe this crisis that she was going to have to leave earlier than planned because she went on to serve in the arm forces and it's a strange school on many levels but one of the strangest things is we all had sheath knives on our hips it was just a very Macho weird the whole danger of that we're not even going to touch on cuz it's sort of small in comparison but what happened was I I was so agonized that she was going to leave early that I started cutting myself I sort of did a deal with God that if I hurt myself enough he would let us stay and of course I look back on that now with incredulity I was terrified that this pedophile was going to leave me as you were speaking I and as when I when I read it in your book I could really feel this both physical kind of nausea but also your total vulnerability like you had no protection you had you were longing for safety for trust and all of us as human beings will go for anything for you know if you put uh people together monkeys together they will go for a hug more than food we need affection we need love more than we need food in order to survive and so when you talk about how she sort of psychotically manipulated you adding L layers of torture on top to kind of keep you on this high alert just is so it's sort of unfathomable there was no shadow of a sort of maternal feminine care in the school so when she presented this it was irresistible and the main backdrop to her was this incredibly unpleasant matron um a a real old battle ax who who's cruel very cruel lady so and and then the headmaster's wife was a ghostlike presence in the background and so you had this young Charming seductress and then this horrifying woman in the background and I remember when I was very young um I remember the day actually it's the 20th of May 1973 it was my ninth birthday and because it was a Sunday we had an extra hours lying and I was wide awake on time so I had an hour to think about the extraordinary feeling of it being my birthday and not being allowed to see my family at all and then I had this realization I had a rather disconnected um relationship with my mother because she had left home when I was very young and I remember thinking this thought uh I thought well my mother found it hard enough to care for me when I was eight but now I was entering this Mighty age of nine how could she possibly CU I could no longer be sweet that was the word she used to say about me as I was sweet and I remember crying then you know sort of one of those memories and then after that um I started to make myself sick on purpose as a sort of plea for attention from this horrible matron really cuz she was the only woman there and I present this chamber pot from under my bed with a thin drool of vomit in it every morning and she just basically tell me to stop wasting her time and get get lost really so the fact that there was literally no one paying attention for what we' consider normal pastoral care there was literally not a shred of it the perverted female member of staff had a clear run really and in a way when you bringing your mom you were already uh vulnerable you know the fault line of her leaving you at two and that you weren't even told the truth then no you were told she was going to come back so the first time you were given communication was a lie and as you said maor was a lie there was there was no trust and what I kind of understood about your mom was that she was fun and effervescent and you know good at kind of being out there but that image of you being left at the train station where you're kind of dreading feeling sick getting back to school and she's like marching back to a jolly lunch or dinner and that the one time she was going to come to the Carol service she missed you your solo because she was late you know I'm sure she is who she is for all sorts of reasons but it is a very profound neglect and it she didn't give all of us as human beings a given a template of love it's called secure or insecure attachment and secure attachment is that we have predictable reliable secure affection that we don't have to perform for it we don't have to do a jig you don't have to nine fear that you're going to lose your sweetness and insecure is avoiding disorganized um and ambivalent and that's when you don't innately feel that there's I'm worthy of love because I I'm not given it because I felt with your dad on the other side there's this Paradox of his sort of internal bankrupt loneliness the two of you eating in separate rooms in this big house and the way he kind of transmitted sadness but he in his own way was no more able to give you affection I mean he could give you a hug and he was warm but he was not paying attention he didn't see you notice you but set against this incredible privilege The Emptiness the bankruptcy of you know your titles all trip the beautiful Furniture the history there's something particularly kind of disturbing I find about that yes you know one one of the things I was worried about writing the book was that it would be seen by people who hadn't read it as a winge by a very very privileged man um but I I I see this as yeah as you touched upon um the individuals as my parents I think my mother leaving home you know she fell in love with someone these things happen um but it was all done so badly I think part of that wasn't necessarily my parents' fault I think divorce among the upper CL classes in the mid to late 60s was still so an athma that nobody really knew how to do it certainly they did it appallingly um I don't remember and the I mean I remember the thing in my child is what you don't see doesn't hurt you you know kind of don't tell don't say anything don't ask for anything yeah I think particularly the relationship with fathers in my sort of period of childhood was very remote and I I felt grateful my father did I I I have no doubt my father loved us enormously he was actually a very sweet man but I do feel that after my mother left he was never going to see a therapist he was never going to get help and I think he limped along really for the rest of his life as an undiagnosed uh depressive and it would have been against his culture to have or or his knowledge actually to be fair to have sought help but of course the impact of somebody else's mental illness is going to be felt by everyone especially children in a one parent house and then with a very difficult stepmother yeah so she comes along late in this piece when I was 12 or so I mean that's a very interesting point one of my major memories from the time at the prep school was being summoned in the summer of 1976 I just turned 12 for the head Master to tell me that my father was marrying my stepmother and I was Furious you know and I I went I remember I went crimson and I said to the Headmaster who I was terrified you had remember that do uh I said I can't believe he hasn't got the courage to tell me himself and then the head Master gave me a sort of patronizing well you know you're very young and men have needs and you won't understand and I was just thinking what the hell you know I've got we couldn't have made it clearer to my father that my stepmother was really not negotiable for us I know of course children shouldn't be able to but we knew she was bad and um the fact that my father didn't have the well the the manhood to tell his children personally was so disappointing because well it was his duty to do so yeah I felt when I've seen you together and maybe this isn't quite as I've seen it is that but because you had neglect you'd be be on a risk register you know if you weren't living in a palace or that you siblings formed a particular Bond where you protected each other like Diana protect wanted to come and see you at school yeah but when I've seen you together or know you together it does feel like you've tried your best between you all I mean amongst difficulties and normal family things to parent each other in a way yeah that's a very good point it was interesting cuz I I hadn't even told my two older sisters are quite a lot older older than me I mean Sarah's nearly a decade older than me and Jane's more than seven years older so and then there was a a brother who died as a baby and then there was D DIN and me so I linked that to Peter by the way oh yes we have we grew up two and two so my two older sisters I hadn't told them anything about this until uh couple of what a year and a half ago or something and they were stunned and you know I'm so upset they must have been so was that for they were very very unhappy and sort of I mean we're not we are quite as a as a unit we thrive on humor and it was very black very black humor it was very hard to find even black humor in that situation Sarah said well I I you you were redheaded and a bit chubby so she was trying to downplay the fact that I might be attractive to a pedophile but the fact is you there's no accounting for why a pedophile doesn't doesn't he in fact that was an interesting part of this process was I think for decades I was trying to work out why she did it you know but the point is that's not my burden I don't need to know why she did it that's her problem that's her issue that's her crime and for me I just you know I get on with it I I I think the have you thought of Prosecuting um well I I I when these issues first arose a decade or so ago there was a famous lawyer who was heading the cases and I wrote to her and I didn't want to initiate a case but I said if somebody comes forward I I will I'll validate and uh in fact I never heard from her so I assume nobody did you know part of the problem here is you're dealing with a a school with a very clever culture the outward sign was that it was a very Christian School and the appalling Headmaster led the services and you know not not the Sunday ones but he was in charge of prayers and Christianity for us and he had this sort of Ry humor that made parents think that he was one of them and they could trust him very clever I'm sure it's a common trick with people like that abusers but for an intensely unfunny man he managed to turn on uh a rich vein of adult humor during his terally reports to the parents and time and time again there are not many parents left actually because obviously there'd be quite an age but when I have confronted the parents in a in a thoughtful way not in an angry way about how to how come they let their children suffer this not mine because they were dead they all said but he wrote Such Jolly amusing reports and that was so clever because how could such a very funny man be bad but he was evil he did Evil he did evil I don't know anything is there something different well I I think he certainly did Evil acts I don't know if he's inherently evil because he did them so um but I'm not here on a moral point I suppose but he was a seriously deranged man I'd say apart from anything else but also there was you know the transgenerational trauma in the upper classes of this sort of contract of this is how we do things this is how we've always done them we don't question them we just sort of Follow by the B we send our young boys away at 6 78 we live like this these are the rules and it enables this kind of rigidity of it enables parents to in some way take no responsibility for the decisions that they're making it's like it's handed over to the system which is a transgenerationally traumatic system of Abandonment yeah I cuz I write history but actually I really delved into the history of this I found it so interesting to do with the Empire yes but essentially I found documentation in my family records going about 300 years where the older generation is sending their boys off aged eight or whatever to school boarding school and they're writing to each other the adults saying of course it's going to be horrendous but at least they're too young to know how awful it's going to be so they know what they're doing it's a conscious quarter rizing of emotions and yes you're right I think it is to do with the Empire I think um the idea would be that if you could cauterize the emotions of a young boy very early you would could send him anywhere in the world to administer on behalf of London and he wouldn't be homesick he wouldn't have normal emotions he would have the stiff upper lip which the English are famous for but sadly that comes at a hell of a price yeah I mean what you shut down you shut down everything you doesn't you know if you shut down your capacity to feel pain and sorrow it also shuts down your capacity to feel love openness trust so you you live in a very narrow window of emotional capacity so you see the world in a very kind of robotic way which works functionally yes but is uh devastating psychologically yes and I I'm very aware about myself actually I know that there's a part of me that died at that school um just factually you know have no pity it's just what happened and I actually dedicate got killed yeah but I actually weirdly have reconnected now so I I my mother used to call me Buzz as a nickname when I was a very small child because I was very quite full of action and naughtiness and all that but that was really ripped out of me at maidwell Joy you said you were full of joy yeah and I dedicate the book to buzz because that's the person who was bumped off by that school but weirdly actually I have to say I've done an enormous amount of work on myself uh I'm I'm in the middle of EMDR which is very helpful and I've breathing exercises and all sorts of things I do taichi uh and I'm finding many ways of tapping into the remnants of Buzz that's a wonderful thing to kind of reconnect to because you know trauma as you experienced it and most child abuse sexual physical psychological isn't one instant it's mostly over a long time and it's always worse if it's meant to be with people that you trust and one of the protective factors is if your mother protects you so you are not protective that wasn't going to happen no that was not happening and and I think recovery from trauma involves rediscovering exactly what you're kind of talking about which is that that when you've learned that human beings can do inhumane acts all human beings are a threat and and a danger and so the recovery is first of all the disclosure because the secret keeps it toxic and shameful and in the disclosure when you as you did with your narrative which must have been Agony you had migraines you begin to tell yourself a story that was sort of incate in your system and it feels a bit like that when you do that you can begin to reconnect with safety with respect with dignity and some trust and I wondered how that is I mean today is a huge day with the book out how you feel about that sort of right now it's been um well I I can a lot of that resonates very deeply with me I mean first of all I've always been because of what happened because I saw human natur it's absolute worse pretty much it's worse and yeah I've always been really interested in history in the grizzly bits because it doesn't surprise me that people can do those things to each other to the extent my friends will roll their eyes when I yet again delve in some apping story about what x did to Y back in the day then there's the sort of the more General point would be that um I I I think that you have to come to terms with the past and it's very hard to when it's bottled up in a s little I suppose like an ubet a sort of prison you put people in to forget and and it's it's been very interesting to hear from people who were my contemporaries who when I started look into this book they'd say oh my God I haven't even looked at maidwell for 50 years I spoke to one but person I bumped into him I hadn't seen him for ages he was a lot older than me and he was one of the few really nice boys there who was older and cared about the younger ones and I talked to him about it and he was sent Away by his parents they did it on purpose he said 300 miles so they wouldn't have to see him he never went home for the very occasional weekends we had out or half time he was made to stay with one of the most perverted Masters who liked to have the boys of course and I said well what did your parents say afterwards and he said no it's a subject we weren't allowed to raise and the one time during the 30 years after he left maidwell and his parents were still alive that they came up was his mother complained to his wife that she once had to look for an expert on bed wetting in London to come and tell him off at the school my God and one time he was told by the head Master actually you know your parents are coming to take you out today and he was so excited and in fact they sent their chauffeur instead who drove him from Northampton share to Leicester Square and sat with him while he watched a movie and then took him back the brutality of it you wonder why someone would have a child I suppose I don't know there's that but I think a lot of people had children cuz that was expected yeah and then he said to me they they were parenting actually as a nine is it or is only came into kind of use in the 60s yes I should I can see why and winot in the sort of 50s Child Development and I did actually study I I think it must be connected we were allowed to do an optional subject at Eaton and I did do child psychology actually and I think that was my first attempt to try and make sense of stuff that had happened so now that you have let yourself know the full horror of the story that has been kind of silently poisoning you since you were eight and all your adult life and has thrown you into all sorts of situations which probably if you hadn't had this experience um you would have avoided can you kind of look back and begin to I don't know come to terms with the things that you've done or because I imagine you know anger is an expression of H he like ow you're hurting me I imagine there's been quite a lot of hot anger Through The Years from the deep sense of hurt yes I does this help deal with that in some way well one of the legacies that I I received was a sort of flight or fight or fight or flight whichever word it is freeze uh because I you know that there was so much uh bruising inside and I think I'm much much less likely to do that anymore so you can regulate now you I really am good at regulating look I mean I'm doing a a form of taiichi it's not what the I mean it's all of it's good taii but it's not the very very slow things you might associate with elderly Chinese it's a bit more of a martial art and I find it incredibly helpful philosophically and emotionally and uh just in terms of all the balances physical mental I found EMDR so good incredible body each session has been a specific a specific trauma memory yeah and some of the ones you've mentioned actually and you can sort of not hit them on the head but box them you feel the distress come out of your body is amazing the first session I had of EMDR of actual work not the preliminaries I was dealing with a very big trauma which is one you touched on which was being lied to that my mother was coming back I remember the scene so well because I was very very young there have been an attempt after I was two for my mother possibly to come back so I was probably three and the Cheery red-faced norol housekeeper Mrs Petri a lovely lady showed me a postcard and said oh this is from Mommy she's in Australia and I remember looking at it and then she said she'll be back soon and then the switch went off inside me I knew I knew she wasn't I knew I was being lied to I didn't know why and I looked at that with the MDR and you know when every time I thought about that Scene It seared into my memory in very very Vivid Vivid colors greens and reds and all sorts and then I did EMDR and the next week the specialist said so how did it go and I couldn't remember what we'd even discussed or dealt with so she had to hint me and then after that I thought about the memory and instead of being this splash of violent colors it was rather like the thin lines of an ex sketch you know that had just disappeared God what a relief yeah so I'm knocking them off one by one it's going to be rather a long course but have you in the in the process of writing the book being able to kind of reconnect with the children that you have with your siblings do you feel like it will open up that in the healing in yourself will enable you to have Forge deeper loving relationships with your own You' got seven children yeah I think so I literally it's never too late is what I'm saying this past weekend I just been with my Elder son it's his 30th birthday and uh gosh 30 just hanging out with him and talking and he's been so supportive through this I mean this has knocked me for six this process and he's always been there very thoughtful and careful did he read a f did they all read a first draft so my that son read a first draft and he had to stop he said it was so upsetting and he was having nightmares and he actually I had nightmares yeah he once in the night punched his girlfriend during his sleep and so he just said he couldn't um but I tell you what I did try and do you very sweetly talked about the way it's written I mean I I knew it was an ugly subject so I wanted the book to not be in any way horrible so I thought I wanted it to be a sort of cider with Rosie type of lyrical I can't change the subject matter matter but I've tried to make it a lyrical piece rather than and you won't believe this and you won't believe that it's it's got to be smooth and also what I've tried to do too is write it really in a way that a young boy would do it so I suppose the takeaway headline would be me being sexually abused but you sort of had to wait 15 chapters for that because it didn't happen till then in my time but also if you're looking at someone across the table from you and saying to yourself how come he became became who he is the uh sexual abuse is a particularly Twisted perverted horror that happened to you but the the tragedy started when you were two of of not being able to trust of not having secure affection not being told the truth you know and then being sent to maidwell you know when you were dreading it and no one listened to you so I mean there's there's a long line of uh injury serious deep psychic injury that happened of which please was the really disgusting part of she was the most disgusting but the the terror of the place was the takeway it was so scary that's what I felt and that's what gave me nightmares yes cuz and having no rules the unpredictability the thing about trauma is unpredictability if you can see it coming when it's coming you you can in some way brace yourself and you have a kind of rule book made well because there was so random and you literally breathe and that you'd be breathing wrong and you'd be punished and beaten yes no there was no no rule book um one of the most appalling things I found out in terms of just just Justice was a friend of mine was sent as a witness against another boy to be beaten the nightly ritual at 10 to six for six or so boys to be beaten and the boy uh lost bladder and bowel control and the Headmaster came out and screamed at him sent him away to clean himself up and then beat my friend who was just there as a witness because he had to have it's like the minor you know he had to have victims and so that was when my friend said to me when he was telling me this story that was his Eureka moment that's when he knew it was evil the set up but then I I I look at you know the whole point of this writing this piece was when I listened to other people I I wrote down loads of notes about this school because I thought it would be good therapy really and then I spoke to people who went through unbelievable things you know rape Etc and I was so shocked I remember saying to one of them this very Sweet Chap from a year below me told me and I took 10 pages of notes and I put the notebook down I said I I just can't write this and he just L across he had he's a very reserved Englishman he just grabbed my arm across the fire place and he said someone has to write our story and that's why I decided to do it and then equally there are some who aren't here I didn't put this in the book because I know the family very well but one of my friends um brother had a terminal illness for a long time and he left in his living will that his parents must not be allowed to visit him in what the doctors judged to be the last two weeks of his life as a punishment not for sending him to maidwell but for not taking him away when he was clearly in meltdown God so horrific but the injury goes so deep and so long yes it's not something you get over and I felt that you were writing for people who couldn't write for themselves telling a story for them well you're right Julia so that was definitely the case that's how I set off but I had no idea how many of my close friends had been through similar not just at maidwell so I had a very close friend who I haven't seen for a while he immigrated and one of the reasons he immigrated was because he couldn't bear to live in a country that allowed that level of abuse to occur to him but I didn't know that until he got in touch with me and in fact two of them did that one went to Scandinavia and one went to austral Asia and the one in austral Asia I'd really lost contact with and then his wife got in touch and said you have no no idea how pleased he is you're writing this good and he had been repeatedly raped in his school um in the 70s and had never told him and if you met him he's the least likely you know he was big rugger yeah and and he's lived with this secret and huge mental problems you know and he's the first person I sent a coffee to actually did yeah you look proud I'm very proud yeah yeah very proud of that so what do you hope for the book no now that it's out well if I I I I want to qualify this I really do want lots of people to read it not for a commercial point of view but because I really hope that the positive impact of this will will resonate and reverberate a bit um it's just a book lots of people I'm sure well I know several people whove written on similar yeah and so I'm not pretending that I'm a Trailblazer here but if it I mean that that all cliche if it can help one person I know it's already helped more than one if it can help lots of people how lovely I mean it was you've touched on it and I WR about in the book it was a horrible book to write there were days I'm quite an efficient writer I've written lots of books but normally I can do my th words a day and edit them and all that but this there were times when I looked at the screen and the screen looked back at me and I thought I'm never going to finish this you know um normally a book takes me three years and this taken with to four and a half and that's because it was just so agonizing to write and what was particularly triggering for me was I go and have lunch with someone and talk to them who' been there the agony was hearing their stuff actually because there is this awful guilt I didn't know they were suffering like that you know and I was quite tough at the school you know I was quite I was quite a senior person in sport and academics you shoved up about five classes ahead of your age and all of that all of that so it's not like I was just sort of sitting in the corner and I was trying to help back then the some of the boys you know and some of them have written very kindly about that and you stood up against the history mon yeah he's still alive he's still alive he's going to get a copy through his through his letter box I that really makes him very unhappy what a violent man and actually there's another thing you touched on earlier the social background I mean I I went to this school with a lot of household names there and um but I this particular Master took against me personally and I didn't know why um but he was a very very uh Earnest Marxist and I suppose I was an obvious Target and he used used to really hurt me you know he you in the back of your leg for no reason yeah but also he had this chunky Signet ring and I used to have bright red hair and he used to do this thing he could hit me I mean he's hitting everyone but he used to hit me and then gouge my scalp and cut it and it would just bleed and crust God at the bottom and it was you know I remember growing up I was thinking I'm 10 you're 38 when I'm 38 I'm going to come and redress the balance well I never did that but the the point is that you had to live on a hope that you could put things right and I suppose in a way my book's an attempt to put things right now yeah it is a fight back any a way when you were powerless then you're not in writing the book you're not powerless no it's not a vengeful piece but it is a statement of truth that I would stand by and and I'm glad that others are rallying around what do you hope it might do for you personally in you in relation to yourself and to your family how might it change you it's made me a much gentler person not not not during the writing that was pretty I don't think I was much fun to be around because it was so intense and I was having endless nightmares and all of that and um but I've come out so much Cala in the last I'd say two or three months I've suddenly noticed this huge uh change I used to drink too much I haven't touched a drop for since January just cuz I don't want it and you're not looking for an anesthetic against the rage well that's what it was of course it was an anesthetic and I see so many of these damaged private school men drinking a lot and I can see why and I don't need that an it's very nice to be clearheaded and pretty well feeling mentally fit and having put this to bed really how do you feel about of love and trusting having had such a misshapen start well I was definitely looking for the wrong things I was very promiscuous and very unhappy in my love life there's been uh you touched on it we you nailed it earlier actually I didn't feel I deserved love I had a great love in my early 20s and I ran from her because it was just too threatening and weird she found out yeah so I I destroyed it and that's the biggest regret of My Life um and I've talked to her more recently about that that's good and apologized and she understands um I actually wrote to her mother at the time when when it ended because she wrote me a very sweet letter and I said I I'm just not worthy of her I wrote that at the time that's heartbreaking isn't it that young man well it was easier to be a people didn't matter familiar sort of I love my mother but you know she was not really capable as you touched on quite rightly you know who knows what happen shaped her but she wasn't really cut out from motherhood so to try and I think I went for good-looking people who weren't really into love and know well it's all I I I'm having a good look at at myself and everything around me and I think it's a very healthy state to be in to be honest and I think I'd be a lot easier to live with now than I ever have been in the past because it was a you are possessed by the the guilt the shame and the pain and I'm not anymore and that overrides every other feeling so you're just it's not available to you you can't look at another person and feel love because were wide evolutionary for those to take over to protect us yes and it was like you in a state of constant vigilance and threat which switches off Your Capacity to feel love to to receive it or to give it because love isn't necessary when you're you know at War and you were at War for most of your life yes I remember actually just reminded me when I was very young I'm talking sort of 19 to 25 I remember thinking I must get married I must get married cuz I thought some somehow marriage would give me the bomm that would make all this pain go away so I'd start make you safe dating these girls and I instantly be thinking of children's names and things very immature damaged state to be in very dangerous and but a natural one looking for for safety where can I find a place where I belong yes where I'm lovable where I can love and I can be myself and that wasn't available to you until you did the Hoffman and then all of this work yeah I think a point I would like to make and I make it in the book when we're looking at this sexual abuse you know I was 11 and a lot of you know men since when they hear of the the headline that I was sexually abused as a child they go oh lucky you cuz it's a woman and I have to make the point you know what that's totally wrong imagine it was a 20-year- old man and 11year old girl and then they go oh but you know that sort of Macho absurd private school sort of laddishness it's just so ignorant disappointing well it's like inherited from our parents that type of ignorance yes totally so I kind of feel like we're coming to the end mhm for people who are listening who both actually may not have had any experience like this what do you want them to know I think it's if I don't sound too pompous I think it would be look after your children you know I was supposedly in the most privileged environment a friend of mine actually who not from the same background as me when he found out this book was coming out he said but I thought you'd be protected and I imagine my parents did too but it was very easy for parents particularly in those days 50 years ago to subcontract the boring business of childhood as they' have seen it to amateurs and they were unregulated amateurs who had dark who attracted particularly dark types of people right Prep School Masters yeah look there's a lot of good people who work in The Scouting movement or whatever but where there are a lot of vulnerable children you're going to attract people with very dangerous Tendencies as well so I would say I mean I I have an 11y old I have many children and my youngest one I do the school run with in the morning and it's a hoot she's really funny and fun and um but she's quite bored of me asking are there any strange teachers at school she sort of rolls her eyes and says oh for goodness s we've been through this and but I will always be on guard there's many other areas where I'll fail but I've always been very on guard with that stuff and I didn't send any of my children children to boarding school until they asked to go I had two who wanted to go age 14 one the other one at 15 I would never send a child to boarding school aged eight even if they think they want to go cuz they like Harry Potter yes it's really very odd thing to do and it shatters families you know you mentioned I grew up with Diana but when I was seven she went off to boarding school and that was so shattering and also in those days private schools didn't coordinate half terms and weekends so there might be 13 weeks where I didn't see her and that's the person I grew up with I mean I I had a split childhood because my parents the one constant was the sister who was sent away to boarding school and she was taken away too yeah what do you think she'd say about the book I think she well I think she'd be really pleased actually I think she'd be very happy that I've come out the other end a hell of a lot better than I went into it I think she be really proud of you thank you she' have been horrified that she didn't know people said why didn't you tell you know but you just don't know and and also I was so thrilled to be home and she was we never talked about school I mean it just wasn't interesting it was getting back with the pets and the life we had been ripped away from you know yeah cuz you wanted to kind of normalize that build a wall between the horror of where it was well that's so interesting because it was so horrific I used to every end of holidays there was a dreaded countdown days and hours and I'd go and say goodbye to the pets say goodbye to each room you know that sort of thing but I remember this thing became an obsession thank God I didn't do it where I used to genuinely strongly consider shooting myself with my father's shotgun in my foot to stop me having to go back and I remember I was once watching TV and it was mash and this Soldier was found guilty of having given himself a self-inflicted wound and I thought well I I know why he did it yeah to get away from the front and you two together I mean she must have hated boing school too yeah it was a gentler version she wasn't she wasn't it was a very old-fashioned place with pets and sewing and swimming and I mean you know it wasn't I think it they were happier actually I'm not saying sorry I'm only talking about her school it was awful for her being away from home but it was a gentler and Kinder environment with a nice head mistress and I imagine the two of you because I've also seen you the sisters together is that that kind of black humor and a lot of laughter and a lot of teasing and a lot of play yeah a lot of that that's the that was really the the basis of the relationship it's a lot of dark humor which of course and and wonderful love yeah yeah totally we both Miss yes very much yeah um is there anything else you want to add no thank you I think you've been very thorough and good thank you thank you Charles thank you Julia a quick notate to say there was a very quick turnaround between this incredibly moving conversation with Charles Spencer and the release on Wednesday morning and just to let you know that the mother daughter segment is going to be released on Friday morning

Channel: Julia Samuel MBE

Views: 80,760

Keywords: mentalhealth, grief, grieftherapy, therapy, wellbeing, relationships

Id: R7YZHcLhrF8

Length: 56min 55sec (3415 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 13 2024