Jennie was sexually abused in a boarding school and says they should be banned
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Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
With her parents overseas, Jennie was left in a boarding school during the 1980s, with no respite from a regime of harsh punishments and a predatory headteacher.
The severe sexual abuse Jennie suffered has left her with many difficult issues she struggles to resolve, and a conviction that boarding schools should be banned.
The headmaster was a strict disciplinarian, who ran a draconian punishment system that Jennie says made the school like a prison – and a breeding ground for sexual abuse of anyone who was vulnerable or alone. Movement around and out of the school was tightly controlled, telephone calls were listened to, letters read, and clothing rules strictly applied.
The headmaster would produce letters from parents giving him permission to act on their behalf and would use these to justify the physical punishments he carried out. Jennie recalls being beaten with a shoe.
She says that looking back, she can see she was institutionalised. She realises the school was a closed system full of vulnerable young people isolated from their families, and the headmaster asserted permission to act as he wished. Punishments were handed out for minor infringements of the rules with pupils taught that this helped them understand why the rules were necessary.
Jennie was very successful at academic studies and at sports. The school encouraged a competitive environment and she was determined to be best. She thinks the headmaster used her eagerness to please and succeed to groom her. He started calling her to his office and she says this made her feel special. He began touching her, softly at first, on the head and arms, then on her legs and body. One summer, when she was ten years old, he raped her.
The sexual abuse continued into the following year. The headmaster would visit the girls’ dormitory and touch Jennie under the bedding. There were periods when nothing happened, and she found this confusing; she wanted to be special. At the same time, she wanted to tell someone what was happening to her, but worried that if she told her parents and they didn’t believe her, things would be worse when she returned to school.
She became rebellious, getting into fights and standing up to teachers. She resisted the headmaster, who responded by hitting her. Worried that people would notice the bruising, he told her to fall down. She was taken to the doctor and he never touched her again.
By the time Jennie was 12 or 13 her parents had returned to the UK, so she was able to go home at weekends. When she left the school at 13, she says she felt ‘broken’ and struggled to fit back into family life. She spent time alone in her room and tried to kill herself. No one asked her why. She began harming herself and drinking excessively.
She was placed in therapy in early adulthood but was not asked why she was acting the way she was. It was only when she reached her mid-20s, after countless hours of therapy, that she was able to talk to her therapist about the sexual abuse. Her therapist’s response was that she had wondered about the reasons for Jennie’s behaviour.
Jennie describes the impact of sexual abuse as a lifetime of damage to herself and others, with relationship problems, underachievement, suicidal thoughts, nightmares, flashbacks and lifelong hurt. She still needs to lock her bedroom door before she can sleep and has a mirror positioned so she would see if anyone approached from behind. She can’t go to the dentist as she can’t stand the physical closeness and invasiveness of having things put in her mouth.
Jennie’s father left the family many years ago, but she has managed to rebuild her relationship with her mother. She now lives with her family and remains very close to her sibling. She has a good job and is studying for a degree.
She thinks that boarding schools should be banned – the environment makes it too easy for abusers, she says. She would like there to be someone always available for young people to talk to in schools; education for young people about sexual abuse; and training for professionals such as teachers and doctors to spot signs of abuse. She feels someone should have recognised what was happening at the school. She wonders what life would have been like for her if the signs of sexual abuse had been spotted by someone earlier.