A Very Private School: Charles Spencer Opens up About the Abuse He Suffered at School

erl Spencer Has Lifted the lid and boy has he lifted the lid on one of England's most exclusive boarding schools he's detailed the physical and the sexual and the psychological abuse that he suffered during his time there relatively recently as a pupil in the 1970s an experience so traumatizing that it's taken him pretty much until now to speak out it's all accounted for in his new Memoir a very private school in which Charles recounts the trauma of being sent away to northamptonshire to the boarding school well Hall he was only 8 years old and the day that he was sent away stayed with him forever and what happens next has stayed with him forever good morning to you good morning Susanna um the school was called Madewell it's an ironic name because they weren't making anything very well in fact they made you ill didn't they yes it was a tough school um I I think what uh Richard alluded to it's not that long ago but it is it's a very different setup to what I understand the school to be now but it's still seems extraordinary to me that uh a child a young child can be sent away at 8 some of my contemporaries were seven uh to a place where abuse was RI and endemic in the school and at that time therefore seemed to attract people to the school in terms of Staff members who knew that they would be able to carry out physical abuse and frankly caning is physical abuse which was sanctioned by the state yes it is extraordinary I mean I I think we have to remember that the parameters of privacy back then it was very easy for a school to become a closed community there was uh no landline we had no access to a landline and our only communication with our parents was a weekly letter home on a Sunday morning which was read by members of staff to see there was nothing tricky in it like you were in some kind of foreign posting where they had to censor any information or a prison camp yes I think both I mean you did feel in a foreign land you were totally disconnected from your family and everything you knew and loved and you were at the mercy of some really bad people uh there was three or four male members of Staff who were well they were pedophiles and sadists and even some of the female members of staff were in the same boat and you just left with nobody there was no figure who I could go to and say I'm feeling lost or abandoned you you mentioned female members of staff that was the thing in the book that really took me back because we're all accustomed to hearing stories about male teaching staff abusing either sexually or with canes or whatever that their pupils but you hardly ever hear of of women members of Staff doing it but that's what happened in in your dormes at night this particular young woman uh what 19 20 something like that would would sneak in after dark and and abuse you yes sexually yes I was 11 I try and explain this to people people think oh lucky you you know you're seduced but not at 11 you're a child and if you reverse the genders if if if I told you Richard that a girl of 11 was uh molested by a 20-year-old man you would be utterly appalled and the devastation of that you know I was so caught up in the emotions and and being a child I didn't really know what was going on I was going to ask you what did you think was happening I I think I knew it was wrong right I thought it was very exciting to have somebody female who was interested in me because it was a place without any form of maternal warmth or kindness the main senior female member of staff there was absolutely horrible so to have a younger female who seemed to well she was grooming as you know she would groom me and give me grapes and biscuits and then come back for sexual things and you know it's very hard to talk about actually but the point is it was I couldn't get my head around it it it did really mess up a very deep part of it and there was a perversion in the sense that you were instructed as children to address every female member of staff as please yes that was the name that you had to give every female member of Staff something so sick about it there are lots of rituals with this school that are so strange and one of them is lumping all the female members of Staff as please it's just so odd to remove their identity uh another was that we had drill every morning sort of physical drill like in a Barracks uh doing exercises under Supervision in a military sort of Camp way uh also we had to fight for after tea every day you had to pick somebody and fight them aggressively it was called ragging it was it's a very strange all the culture there was when I look back on it now just extremely odd and excuse after excuse was found by in particular one male member of staff to Kain B he clearly gained sexual gratification from that because of of what people like you witness in terms of his arousal yes he I I think the whole school was based around delivering to that senior member of Staff six or so boys buttocks every evening and he would cane five Strokes parallel drawing blood and then send the sixth one across the other five and I have friends now I'm 59 a friend who's my age still has the scars on his but from 1977 I'm so sorry it is so SI the book at a very private school I have to it's a contradiction really because it is beautifully written you write beautifully you're a wonderful writer but it is describing these horrific stomach churning events abuse when you sat down to when you first day you sat down in front of your laptop say here we go what was your intention in writing the book well I I'd met several survivors who had had worse experiences than me and one of them begged me to write because I do write and I wanted to do justice to him and the others who I learned about who had terrible things you know 9-year-old who was raped there repeatedly I mean really Grim Grim stuff and so I thought I've got to do the right thing record this almost as a piece of modern history but also to to do justice to their individual Tales so it's this isn't a um about me I'm the way into a story of very dark abuse do you think because if you take away what you experienced which was horrific but a lot of parents will think even sending a child of the age of seven away to boarding school where you have limited contact obviously we're in a much more connected world there's limited contact with parents do you think children as young as seven should still be sent to boarding school no I I having written this book I'm now very sure in my own mind that no child should be sent there before the age of 13 how can they have a voice how can they know what's right and wrong I've got an 11-year-old daughter and I look at her and I think I wouldn't let her go and in fact I have seven children which is rather a lot I realized uh but I have actually not sent any of them to boarding school my two boys elected to go to boarding school in their teens for weekly boarding and I've been on my children's case because of my experiences they've all got very bored listening to me checking up on what's going on at yes you ask don't you yes just to make sure that they have a space if they ever need to say anything presumably back in the 70s it wasn't normal from the background I came to to have a conversation with your parents I know that sounds very odd to people now but we didn't talk about things it was too awkward so I think a lot of parents didn't know some knew that they were sending you to a brutal place which they thought would be good for you long term it would toughen you up but you were sending your children to live with people who you knew nothing about and they could be very dangerous indeed there was also I think an acceptance of the power of authority wasn't there I mean I didn't go to boarding school I went to a boy's grammar school where I was viciously caned and and without question with sexual motive by a male and a female member of Staff they did it together um yeah she watched he did it um and at the time I was at your age I was 11 I didn't realize what was going on I knew I was being Kan and it was agonizing and I was scarred for about four years after that um but when I told when I went home and told my parents what had happened although they were very sorry on my behalf there was no question that they were going to go back to the school and complain or raise the issue they regarded the punishment as being somehow meat and just and part of the system and that's I'm so sorry to hear that Richard you shouldn't have suffered that and it's appalling but I think you're right it was a different mindset some parents thought they were lucky to have their children in a certain school they weren't going to rock the boat there's one boy I met I call him a boy he's 65 now but he was beaten so badly that he couldn't get his underpants off he had to be soaked in the bath to get them off for two weeks and he went home he was the one day boy in the school and his mother never said anything did you ever tell your parents what had happened none of us did all of the people I spoke to not one of us told our parents part of this is cuz we were so young we had no context to our lives we didn't know how bad it was the second was I think we assumed our parents knew what they were doing sending us here you know we thought our parents were all seeing and all knowing so they must have sent us here for a purpose so we just got on with it if the young woman who abused you uh is still alive she'd be in her mid-70s now um if you could see her what would you say I don't want to see her this is the one barrier I have I couldn't bear to you know when I sent the script to my Publishers the weirdest thing happened I went into the attics at home to try and do something completely different and I moved some books and I found my diary from 1976 and she had written in it with her contact details and I was nearly sick I want to have nothing to do with her ever again if if she goes to prison that's fine I Poli investigating what happened not as far as I'm aware if they did I would support their investigation but personally I don't want to get involved with her Charles your sister Diana you write in the book said cuz she went to boarding school yes she said to her parents to your father if you loved me you wouldn't leave me here isn't that brilliant I'm so proud of her for having said that she was a little bit older she was 10 when she went but that was her first day at boarding school and I think that's so mature you know everyone appreciates Diana's qualities but that says to me that she had this incredible emotional intelligence from such an early age to say that to a parent it's a fair Challenge and my father remembered it forever but she was still s sent she was look she shouldn't have been sent so young but she it was to a very gentle nice school where there was limited education I'm embarrassed to say because that was the attitude towards girls from a certain background then but a lot of nice thing they could take their pets and it was all rather gentle a different experience to yours finally Charles has the book been catharus for you yes not when I was writing it it was horrible to write and I got very unwell but uh now it's done and I'm hearing from people who are opening up about their experiences it's it's been very cathartic now I want to read this statement from maidwell school uh who said it is sobering to read about the experiences Charles Spencer and some of his fellow alumni had at the school we're sorry that was their experience within education today almost every facet of school life is evolved significantly since the 1970s and they encourage anyone with similar experiences to come forward and contact either mawell Hall um or the police but you've heard directly from the school haven't you and this is an update since yesterday yes finally yesterday I was very upset actually that they hadn't apologize I found that I mean that's obviously written by a lawyer what you read out but the Headmaster wrote and said how devastated he was to read it and that's much much more meaningful for me because to have a school acknowledge how awful it was and it was awful for a very long time it isn't now um I I think is helpful for everyone who went there not just me thank you for writing the book I think it will be it's a horror ifying read um but it's a really important account and I think it's helping people already to be able to deal with what perhaps they might have experienced as well thank you so much Charles thank you Charles great to talk to you thank you um we obviously have a helpline for you if you are affected by those issues itv.com helplines and the book is a very private school a memoir by Charles Spencer and a very very good read thank you Charles and all the very best thank you

Channel: Good Morning Britain

Views: 31,866

Keywords: good morning britain, breakfast show, news, morning news, gmb, good morning britain interview, itv, susanna reid, Talk Shows - Topic, earl spencer, charles spencer interview, charles spencer book, charles spencer on diana, charles spencer a very private school, charles spencer children, royal family

Id: XD5yyVhM0E8

Length: 12min 41sec (761 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 26 2024