Daniel says ‘private schools have their own rules’ and this allows abuse to occur
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Daniel’s parents were pleased to get support with boarding school fees, so their son could have a good education.
But he was physically and sexually abused at the school and is still affected nearly 40 years later.
Daniel was sent to a boarding school in the early 1980s. His parents would not have been able to afford this, but they received support with the fees. ‘Mum and dad saw an opportunity for me to get a good education’ he says.
Daniel was subjected to physical abuse from the moment he arrived at the school. He was sexually abused from the age of 10.
Daniel recalls meeting the headmaster, who made a big effort to impress his parents with a tour of the school. However, away from their gaze, this man was a violent bully. He would beat the boys with a bat. Daniel says ‘...it was excruciating’.
On one occasion, he and some other boys were caught talking and their punishment was to write thousands of lines. Desperate to go to the toilet, Daniel left the room where they were writing the lines. The headmaster caught him and kicked him so hard he was badly injured. The matron said she would speak to the headmaster but Daniel begged her not to, worried it would make things even worse.
There were other teachers at the school who also physically abused the boys.
Daniel comments ‘The lifestyle and dynamics of the school were very different because they were not regulated by normal rules’.
Part of this was that the older boys were given authority over the younger ones. Sometimes Daniel was forced out of bed into the cold corridor if he ‘annoyed’ the prefect in charge of the dormitory.
Daniel began to wet the bed, which meant he was bullied and picked on even more.
He didn’t tell his parents about the abuse by the teachers or the other boys. He says ‘I was embarrassed because I thought I’d done something wrong to be punished’.
The perpetrators were older boys, often prefects, who had power over the younger ones.
Daniel was first sexually abused at the school before he turned 11. He describes playing outside with a number of other boys, when an older boy showed him pornographic material and encouraged Daniel to masturbate.
Later, when Daniel returned to the same location not expecting anyone to be there, the same older boy said he would help Daniel do the things depicted in the pornographic material. The boy blindfolded Daniel, took Daniel’s penis out and put it in his mouth.
Daniel remembers pulling his shorts up and running as fast as he could back to the school. Daniel tried to avoid the older pupils, but it was difficult because of the power dynamic that existed between the older and younger boys.
‘I felt ashamed and embarrassed … I kept thinking “Was that my fault?”’ he says.
He experienced several more incidents of sexual abuse by older boys over the following year. He recalls waking up one night to find another boy naked in his bed. Daniel pushed him out of the bed.
Daniel was also sexually abused by a teacher who lived in the school. The teacher encouraged the boys to visit his room in the evening and would give them alcohol. ‘I’d heard about this and it seemed exciting’ says Daniel.
One evening Daniel was alone with the teacher. The man began touching him and then Daniel realised he had his penis out. He then forced his penis into Daniel’s mouth.
Daniel says he froze. He remembers going back to bed feeling ashamed and questioning why he hadn’t stopped the teacher. He never went back to the teacher’s room and not long afterwards the teacher left the school.
Daniel says he became extremely withdrawn. Not long after the incident with the teacher, Daniel left the school and was sent to a different school. He was academically far ahead of the other pupils at the new school.
He says ‘I wanted to fit in so I regressed, got in with the wrong people’. This escalated to him taking drugs, drinking, and committing petty crimes. ‘I didn’t care because I was angry with the world’ he adds.
When he was 18, after an evening with his friends, Daniel got drunk and woke to realise he had been sexually abused by an older man. He describes how this brought back memories of the sexual abuse he experienced at school. ‘All of that stuff came flooding back … you try to bury it.’
Daniel understands that the abuse has had a significant impact on him. ‘I am carrying it all the time and it's just there’ he says. He has frequently had suicidal thoughts and suffers from anxiety and depression. He takes medication ‘to keep me going and able to have a normal conversation but I don’t want to be on it’.
He has accessed support from a rape and abuse charity and says ‘It took me a lot to go and speak about it’ but the counselling has been ‘fantastic’.
Daniel says ‘I didn’t want my experiences to affect who I am … but the traumatic stuff that happened to me paved the way in my later life’.