Danny does not think boarding schools ‘are a good idea for children’
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Danny was eight years old when he was sent to boarding school.
He was sexually abused by other pupils and a teacher. He feels the culture of this school, and others like it, encourage abuse.
Danny remembers his parents letting him know how expensive his prep school was, but he says ‘I didn’t like it at all’.
Soon after he arrived, a teacher came into the dorm, and told the boys that if they felt lonely they could get into each other’s beds and cuddle each other.
Danny said that he felt lonely. Another pupil got into bed with him, hugged him and then began touching his genitals. Danny asked the boy to get out of the bed. He now wonders whether the teacher made the suggestion in order to ‘single out the vulnerable ones’.
On another occasion, a prefect woke him in the middle of the night and told him to go and see the deputy headmaster. Danny remembers how confused and disorientated he felt, and scared that he was going to be punished.
The deputy headmaster told him to take his pyjamas down and lean over a chair. He caned Danny and sexually assaulted him. Danny could feel the abuser’s erect penis on his back. The man digitally penetrated him and ejaculated on him.
One day, Danny and some other boys were accused of damaging property and were kept inside together. While they were talking, he told the other boys what the deputy headmaster had done. From a comment made by one of the others, Danny got the impression that he had been abused ‘in a worse manner’.
Not long after, the deputy headmaster was dismissed. Danny never found out why.
The prep school was Catholic, and during his time there, Danny had his confirmation – a ceremony that is conducted by a senior cleric. On the way to the chapel, another pupil approached him and told him that they could go behind the altar where they could drink wine and perform oral sex on the bishop.
Danny says he didn’t know if this was a ‘joke’, but he didn’t go.
Because of his experiences at school, by the time he was about 11 years old, Danny had disengaged from his religion. He refused to be an altar boy and after a priest asked him a lot of sexual questions, he stopped going to confession.
He saw other pupils being physically abused at the school. The boys were made to write letters home, but once when Danny wrote to his parents that he was ‘having a terrible time’, the teacher told him the letter would not be sent. He says he ended up writing ‘something bland and generic’.
He recalls similar censoring when he wrote a poem that expressed his feelings of depression, and a teacher made him change it.
When he left the Catholic boarding school, Danny went to a mixed state school which he says he much preferred. He never told his parents what had happened to him at school. He says he thought that if he told anyone about the abuse, ‘the sky would fall in’. He tried to forget about it and pretend it never happened.
But the effects of his early experiences stayed with him. Danny has suffered from anxiety and depression throughout his life, but says he didn’t realise what it was. He describes how angry he used to feel, particularly if he was ever approached by older men.
A few years ago, Danny had a breakdown, became unemployed and was made homeless.
He started having counselling, and says it was only then that he started to ‘piece things together’.
Danny believes that if schools are more mixed, with children of different academic and physical abilities and backgrounds, they are less likely to breed prejudice and more likely to teach children to understand and tolerate differences.
He thinks sex education should begin at the youngest possible age and there should be more education about homosexuality, and prejudice against it.
Danny finds comfort in music, and he says that he feels well supported. He says he would definitely advise counselling and he ‘feels in a good place now’. He adds that if he had had counselling earlier, he could have ‘got a lot better a lot quicker’.