Archie wonders if he would have been a ‘better person’ had he been allowed an innocent childhood
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Archie vividly recalls feeling ‘abandoned’ at the age of six years when he was sent to boarding school by his parents.
With little family involvement in his life, he was vulnerable to sexual abuse by a predatory and perverted teacher. For more than 50 years he has been trying to cope with the mental, physical and emotional damage caused by the abuse.
Archie’s mother and father were both in the military and living abroad. His sister remained with their parents until she was a teenager, and this heightened his anguish at having been ‘dumped’.
He considers that the day he arrived at boarding school was the start of his adulthood. He says: ‘I never had a childhood, I was ironing shirts by the time I was seven years old.’ He adds poignantly: ‘At the end of the day, I was a little kid and all I wanted to do was play with my little cars.’
Archie describes school life as ‘horrendous.’ He says he spent his first year desperately trying to adapt and fit in, and he joined the cricket and football teams.
He remembers being sexually abused for the first time in his second year at the school. One of the masters, Mr Hindley, taught cricket and history. He would come into the showers after the boys had played sports and help them to wash. The boys were given their own ‘bath night’ once a week and Mr Hindley would wash Archie, paying particular attention to his genitals.
Archie said there was no awareness of sexual abuse during his school days. No sex education was provided and he had no idea that was happening was abuse. He says: ‘I honestly didn’t think there was anything wrong … I just thought it was normal.’
He adds that even if he had thought of reporting the abuse, he would almost certainly have been disbelieved and beaten. The pupils lived in fear of the headteacher and many of them had weals on their body caused by his frequent use of the cane. Archie says: ‘At that sort of age there are only so many times you can get beaten.’
Mr Hindley also took the opportunity to sexually abuse boys in his role as a history teacher. Archie describes how the teacher made one of the children masturbate in front of the other pupils, on the pretext of demonstrating what an ejaculation looked like. Mr Hindley made another boy swallow some of the semen.
The sexual abuse became more frequent in Mr Hindley’s classes, in the showers and baths and in his home. The other boys quickly learnt how to masturbate and Archie says it felt to them that they were in ‘a race to match your mate’. The children were all around eight years old.
Archie had some contact with his grandparents who were in the country, but they did not provide any refuge from the abuse he suffered at school. His grandfather was an alcoholic and he says his grandmother was not eager to care for him. They lived a long way from the school, so visits to them were infrequent.
During long weekends, most of the children went home to stay with relatives, but Archie often had to stay with Mr Hindley and a few boys who also had no place to go. On these occasions, the boys were encouraged to have sex with each other.
Archie clearly recalls having no understanding of what he was doing, but he has since felt extreme guilt that this abuse by the teacher in some way made him an abuser too. He says he has asked himself over and over whether he ‘encouraged’ the abuse by Mr Hindley and whether it was his fault. But, he says: ‘The truth of the matter is I didn’t know it was wrong. I had nothing to go by.’
Mr Hindley’s abuse progressed from watching the boys having sex, to orally and anally raping Archie and others. He recalls that he and some of the other boys inserted objects like candles into their anuses so the abuse wouldn’t be so painful. Archie says there was the constant worry about what would happen if Mr Hindley was disappointed – the abuser made it clear that to be in the cricket team ‘favours had to be given’.
Archie remembers that while at boarding school, he went on a holiday with his parents. He did not tell them about the abuse – he had not seen them for two years and he says he felt they did not care about him. He considers that he had become institutionalised and did not know what was ‘normal’, as he had no contact with the outside world.
When Archie was about 12, Mr Hindley stopped sexually abusing him. He recalls that despite having a sense of relief, he questioned whether he had done something wrong to no longer have the teacher’s attention. He comments that there were younger children starting at the school and he believes he no longer ‘fitted’ with what Mr Hindley wanted.
It was only when Archie started senior school that he began to realise he had been sexually abused. He says he lived in fear that one of the boys in the new school would find out about the abuse and label him as homosexual.
Archie didn’t consider reporting the abuse to the police or his father because he was sure he would not have been believed. He has only recently started to talk about what happened to him, after a lifetime of pain and anger.
He has been plagued with mental health issues and he feels that the longer he hid the abuse the more his rage increased. He says that he has been a violent man and admits that he still feels a significant fear of being labelled homosexual, and has homophobic feelings.
Archie has mobility issues and experiences pain, and believes the physical impact of the sexual abuse could have caused some of his health problems.He is having counselling which he finds helpful and he is working very hard to understand and address his issues.
The abuse has affected his sex life and caused him marital problems, but he stresses that he has ‘amazing support’ and acceptance from his wife who has only recently found out about the sexual abuse he experienced as a child.
Archie would like there to be age-appropriate sex education for all children in schools, and feels strongly that children should be believed and not be in a situation where they fear punishment if they disclose sexual abuse.