She is from a rather different background: she grew up in the Scottish Borders in a family that had for generations worked in the garment mills of Hawick; her first job was as a maker of knitwear, but later she got a degree in community education, helping homeless people find new careers.
She’s also worried that her parents, all her family, still feel the effects of her brother’s abuse. I tried to hold it in my hands so I could put it in the trash can, but by that time it was all over the floor. Obsessed with travel? And we lived in terror.”. At 49, James says he still does not sleep well because, from the age of 11, he was fetched by a teacher from his bed at night to be 'disciplined' - in fact, abused. Reporting on what you care about. Of husbands incapable of loving: “Such a closed, emotionally unavailable man. I thought that if I stopped and fixed it, I would make it worse so I proudly strutted to the end of the hallway and escaped into the crowd on the stairwell. 'I saw boys who wet their beds, who were then made more miserable by other boys who attacked them for it. I put my foot on the pedal and speed it all the way to school, park, and practically sprint up the stairs because I'm pretty damn sure I am about to shit my pants at this point. It was when Margaret, from South London, had her own four children that she understood the lasting effects of the trauma. She is of the stiff-upper-lip generation – which, of course, is part of the root of the problem with this whole issue.”, Ignoring the unacceptably ugly is deeply rooted in the class and its culture, Mary and I both agree. ', Margaret says that going to a boarding school at the age of eight made her develop a protective shell, Margaret Laughton, 79, pictured here aged nine in 1946 during her first term at boarding school. Sitting at the end of her iron bed, nine-year-old Judith Okely sobbed uncontrollably for the father she had lost.
Boarding School Syndrome by Professor Joy Schaverien is published by Routledge, at £27.99. As a teenager he sought out groups of older men for sex. "My most embarrassing moment was definitely the time I accidentally texted my choir teacher 'I love you babe' instead of my boyfriend. When the day was over, I walked outside and a gust of wind caught my jacket and it flipped up. By the time the police finally started investigating my brother he was psychotic, depressed, schizophrenic: whatever the labels were, his brain was like a series of exploding Bunsen burners.”. I’d done some therapy myself and I started to look at boarding school, wondering if it was harmful to him, and I came across Boarding School Survivors. A tendency to shut down emotionally, and freeze out, in the face of something sad, or frightening or infuriating. The absolute rule of silence after lights out meant when he was returned to the dormitory, he dared not breathe a word. But I have thought I’m having to live with the consequences of this system. I did my part, donated, and as I was eating my cookie, everything started to turn black. But we didn't even know what sex was,' says Judith, whose school was later merged with a boys' school and renamed. That’s the only reason I’m talking to you – because there must be myriads of other people who also need to speak.”. 'I was 70 before I organised a birthday party for myself because, having been at boarding school, I didn't trust anyone to turn up,' she says. 'Children need to be brought up in the company of people who love them,' she says. “We do, now. 'She came up to me and snapped: 'Your Daddy has died. Luckily I was wearing a big black robe so it was easy to hide the spot on my gown...I just couldn't take it off for pictures. Y was in prison for 12 years and I have found him on the sex offenders register. ', Until she started therapy in her 50s, Margaret says she found it difficult to trust anyone close to her. But he won’t leave it. On top of that, I peed myself. ", —Suggested by Cynthia Velasquez-Lund (Facebook), "About two weeks into my freshman year, I decided to wear an adorable knit top with a short jacket over it. But I don’t want him to do something he doesn’t want to do. It struck me as terrible that children of seven could be sent away to a world where there was no physical contact, not even a hug when you felt ill.'. Three months ago, Alex Renton wrote about the abuse he suffered at boarding school.
Also, I had never really taken on the fact that boarding school had been his whole life, not just a one-off traumatic event or unfavourable circumstance but an entire upbringing, and so the problems he faces are not just bad habits or infuriating traits – they are the result of a decade of ingrained survival practices.”. When I was switching shoes, one of them fell out of my hand and as I went down to grab it, I slipped on my graduation gown and flashed everyone in line. He “went off the rails”, as he says, experimenting and testing himself. ', Like most children sent to boarding school, Margaret (pictured here aged five) found the moment she was left at the school the most traumatic of all. Want a nanny as perfect as Kate's? They then carry that false self throughout life.'. ', Margaret, pictured aged 10 in 1947, when she was sent home during the school holidays. After that, I never cried in public again. My classmates even had to jump over it just to get out of the door. I had to meet the woman with this volcano of righteous outrage. Now my life is all over Twitter and Facebook. We had metal beds and a tiny side table. © 2020 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. I was mortified. We were late getting on and it was almost full, but we were able to sit in the third row, squeezing three to a seat. 'Sending a child away at a young age is a huge rupture in its attachment to its parents. The sexual abuse that many boys suffered at boarding schools is now widely recognised - but some claim it was simply part of a far wider pattern of emotional and physical cruelty. “As little as 10 years ago,” she says, “child abuse was hardly spoken about: it wasn’t acknowledged, perhaps it was almost expected as part of an induction into real life. The irony is that many of these children inevitably come from ultra-privileged backgrounds - and the schools they attended boasted beautiful historic buildings amid manicured playing fields. The beauty of the buildings at Boarzell Prep in Sussex belied the 'terrible emotional desert' inside. I turned around and looked at the quiet freshman who sat behind us and blamed it all on her. In the latest in our series on boarding-school abuse. And I looked at the symptoms, and my husband, and I just went: tick, tick, tick.”, “I thought of myself as a hero,” she writes on her blog. But I couldn’t, and one can’t, and it isn’t like that. In front of my entire class. At that moment, I realised I couldn't do the stiff upper lip any more. Ian agrees. Yet I was being ordered not to cry because it was inconvenient. It lists some of the rules of Alcatraz, the legendary high-security prison she visited in San Francisco. 'It hit me that this was exactly the age I had been sent away, but without toys, as I was told they might get lost. Because it’s safe.”, “At the checkout, I can show what a great husband I am, how much I love and look after my wife. Some of the relatives who have written just want explanations, and perhaps redress, even if these things have become impossible. ", "When I went to my friend's house for the first time I had to take the bus home with her, since she lives in a different part of town. We have to stop early boarding.”. ", —Suggested by Jack Danger Kidd (Facebook), "During my junior year I decided to give blood. Friday came along and I went the entire school day feeling horrible. McFadyen wanted Clegg to push for a government inquiry into institutional child abuse – a wish that was granted earlier this month. Yet casual cruelty by both teachers and boys was part of everyday life. “I knew he was a complex character.” On their first meeting, his mother asked: “Did you know he was a drug addict?” But it was only after they had married and she and her son, then 12, had set up house with him did Paula understand that Ian’s past was going to impinge on their future. I never wore those pants again. Although the worst of this emotional brutality took place in the past, for some children boarding is still a trial to be endured.
'I was left on the pavement crying as my mother drove off,' she recalls.
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