Harry is still haunted by his experience in residential school
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Harry was prompted to speak about the sexual abuse he suffered as a child by recent reports of sex offences by football coaches against young players. He says he wishes he could have spoken about it earlier
The sexual abuse occurred at a residential primary school, where he was sent because of previous non-attendance at school. Some of the other lads were nice, he says, but others horrible, and some teachers ‘had it in for him’.
A skinny boy, Harry was picked on by a bigger pupil, Mick, who slept in the bed next to him. Mick was about five years older and would make Harry ‘do things to him’. Mick sexually abused other boys in the dormitory too, but mainly Harry.
Harry didn’t feel able to tell anyone as he was concerned what they would say. He became too frightened to shower because Mick would follow him in and sexually abuse him. Mick threatened to punch him if he did not comply with his demands. This went on every day at the school until Harry left; he was too scared to run away.
Harry recalls that he used to wet the bed every day and would be caned for this. He would put newspaper in his bed to soak it up and put his pyjamas on the radiator to dry because he didn’t want to get punished. He remembers he started to sleepwalk. He also reports that he was sexually assaulted by a teacher.
Harry told his father what had happened and he in turn beat up the teacher and reported it to the police. The teacher was sent to jail. On one occasion he recalls that a teacher hit a boy and broke the bones in the boy’s hand. The victim was sent to hospital and told to say he had fallen.
Harry says that the headteacher picked on him all the time. He believes all the teachers must have known what was going on at the school, but he didn’t dare report it – he felt he did not want to cause trouble. Sometimes he would lie awake all night petrified, with the blankets wrapped tightly about him.
Harry had no one to talk to at the school. No one in authority, such as a social worker, came to see him in five years, and he had only occasional visits from his family. Years later, Harry wrote an account of what happened in his childhood and gave the note to his GP.
Harry then passed it to a solicitor and the police became involved, trying to find Mick. Harry says his experiences still haunt him all the time; he can’t stop thinking about what went on, and that if there had been someone to tell, it could have been stopped.
For a long time, he was petrified of the reaction that he would get. He didn’t tell his wife until recently; he says he felt dirty. He has not dared tell his child but says he would want his child to tell him if something happened to him.
Harry feels strongly that children need someone they trust to talk to and should be educated to speak out. He adds that adults who have been sexually abused need somewhere confidential and independent to speak about their experiences.