Easton says ‘It’s a terrible thing not to be believed and then have to stay in that environment’
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Easton was sent to boarding school when he was 13 years old.
Hundreds of miles from home, he realised he was powerless against the teachers who abused him.
Easton didn’t want to go away to boarding school, but his mother thought he needed the discipline. ‘I used to clown around, but they said I was disruptive which was not true’ he says.
The school was several hours drive away from his home. He had never been away before and he immediately knew he didn’t like it.
After a couple of weeks, Easton and some other boys were caught ‘larking about’. The headmaster threw him across the room so he hit his head on the wall, causing a prominent bruise.
When he told his mother what had happened, she said ‘That’ll teach you’.
After the summer holiday, Easton decided to go and see the proprietor of the school. He reported what the headmaster had done but was told this could not have happened.
The next day, the headmaster said he had heard Easton had been telling lies, and made him get in a freezing cold shower, ‘then beat the hell out of me … I didn’t know where to go. I couldn’t do much. I tried to stay out of his way’.
A member of the day staff, Mr Jones, would take the boys on day trips. Easton is not sure how this came about, but it was arranged for him to stay at Mr Jones’s house. He says ‘I was pleased to get out of school … we got cakes on the way’.
But in the morning, Mr Jones came into his room, sat on the bed and started touching his private parts. Easton says ‘I froze … I didn’t know what to do … I had already taken a good hiding for speaking out’.
But he did decide to report what had happened. He told another senior teacher, who told Easton that because his parents ran a business, they would not be happy to have to close it and come to the school.
‘I knew what my mother was like’ says Easton, so he didn’t argue, but says he regretted it. After that he tried to avoid Mr Jones but this was not always possible.
A new headmaster, Mr Thomas, came to the school, and Easton says it was immediately clear ‘he had a temper’. When he was 14, Mr Thomas dragged him out of the showers and made him kneel down naked for a long time. He told Easton he had heard about the lies he told.
‘I decided that I wouldn’t report it because I wasn’t believed before’ he says. ‘My childhood died there’.
Years after he left school, Easton read that the headmaster had been charged with sexually abusing children.
Easton wasn’t given a proper education at the school. There was a very high turnover of staff, and for much of the time the boys were made to do chores and heavy work in the buildings and grounds.
He still suffers with the impacts of his experience at school. He self-harms, has anxiety, nightmares and cold sweats. He finds it very hard to go out and mix with people, and as a result is isolated.
Easton says it is wrong that people without qualifications were allowed to look after vulnerable children, especially in such an isolated environment far from their homes. Some of the staff had backgrounds in the armed forces and the prison service.
‘We had no voice and nowhere to go’ he says. He adds that schools should be inspected by official lay visitors, and staff should have a way to speak out about their colleagues.