6 Feb 2014

In male-only boarding schools some things never change

Certainly the regular beatings with a “butter pat” – a thing like a small cricket bat – had undertones of sadism, but it was not until I reached my secondary boarding school that I detected a much more insidious culture.

At thirteen we were openly assessed for our “desirability” by the bigger boys and prefects.One or two of the staff were leery, though I never heard of sex between masters and boys. But between “little boys” and “bigger boys” it was endemic.

To this day I’m sceptical that walling up adolescent boys in educational establishments together is ever a good thing.

The school I went to is transformed from the time I was there – the introduction of girls has done much to render it an altogether more civilised place.

But as the leader of the Caldicott School paedophile ring is sentenced to eight years in prison, I cannot help recalling my own school days and wondering.

My central memory from the very first day was of walking into the boarding house where I was to live and hearing wolf whistles.

The Prefects’ common room was to the left of the front porch. You had to run the gauntlet of comment and noise that surrounded our coming and going into the building. In later years I was aware of every “new boy” being eyed for his blue eyes, or blond hair, and more.

There was a cellar area, and there were other dark corners where sexual encounters would be grabbed.

It’s not worth rehearsing what went on in detail. The continuing investigations into activities in numerous British private, or indeed public, schools together with sudden resignations as at one home counties institution this very year, suggest that exploitative sex in male-only boarding schools is still going on.

We should not allow ourselves the luxury of believing that Caldicott, other schools like it, and what went on there in the past, were somehow isolated and only historic.

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