Damon says ‘I had been groomed so well I was like a magnet for paedophiles’
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Damon was groomed, abused and sexualised by a teacher at his boarding school.
These experiences resulted in him behaving for many years in extreme ways that endangered his physical and mental health.
Damon’s family were not well off, but he was quite bright and was awarded a scholarship to an expensive boarding school when he was in primary school.
He remarks that because his fees were subsidised, this put him in a ‘funny, almost cap-in-hand role; like you were quite beholden and should be grateful to the school’.
Damon continues that there was a senior teacher at the school who was ‘like God’ to him. This man regularly selected boys to take part in sexualised rituals, which involved touching their genitals. Damon says ‘The power he had … being selected made you one of the “special” boys’.
He remembers the teacher trying to justify his actions by referencing historical figures who preferred young boys to females.
The teacher frequently caned the boys. On one occasion after Damon was beaten, the teacher held him tightly for a long time. After this, he continued singling Damon out for abuse, sometimes waking him in the night to touch him sexually.
Damon recalls how this led to conflicting and confusing emotions for him. It was, he says, ‘the most overpowering feeling I had ever felt, and it led to a feeling of extreme love that made no sense … I became obsessed’.
Damon comments ‘He targeted kids from poorer backgrounds, or without parents or a father figure; he just knew the vulnerable children’.
The teacher suggested taking Damon on an overnight trip. Damon really wanted to go, because of his feelings for the teacher, but his parents vetoed the idea. He believes they guessed something inappropriate was going on, but they did not want to jeopardise their son’s education.
Damon is certain other staff at the school also knew about the abuse. ‘I didn’t see it at the time, but there was a culture of secrecy’ he says.
Damon was profoundly affected by the abuse and the emotions he felt towards the teacher. By the time he was 11, Damon says that in the school holidays, he would wander around looking for ‘love’ from men.
He was violently raped by one man he encountered. Despite the fear and pain he felt, he says, ‘I thought that’s what making love was like’.
Damon moved to another school. His compulsive behaviour continued and he began taking money for sex. He would make blatant overtures to older men in public places, in full view of passers-by. He became completely isolated from his peers, because his life experiences were so different.
In his mid-teens Damon saw the teacher who had abused him. He was still obsessed with the man, and tried to touch his genitals, but was pushed away. He says ‘I knew at that point I was too old for him’.
Damon ran away from home when he was 16, and describes going into ‘a massive downward spiral, then collapse’. He became involved in drugs and other crime, and was homeless for a time.
More recently he saw the teacher again. He was considering reporting the abuse, but was once again overwhelmed by feelings towards the man and realised he wouldn’t be able to.
Damon lives with physical problems as a result of being raped when he was young and is still troubled with conflicting emotions. He says that he struggles to define what the teacher did as abuse because it was non-penetrative, but he knows it was grooming with sexualised behaviour.
He is concerned that the internet not only facilitates the sexualisation of young people, but also hides it.
Later in his life, Damon returned to education and gained a degree and postgraduate qualifications.