Fabian says homophobia at boarding school let his abuser emotionally blackmail him
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Fabian was educated in prestigious boarding schools from the age of eight.
He was sexually abused by a senior scholar who later became his teacher, who he had asked to protect him from bullying.
Fabian explains that his first school specialised in music and here he met a senior scholar called Christopher.
When Fabian was 13, he gained a scholarship to another leading public school. Christopher had attended this school, he gave Fabian his number and told him to keep in touch.
Fabian says that when he got to his new school ‘For various reasons, I had a difficult time settling in … some horrific stuff happened in my first couple of weeks’. He describes how some of the senior boys made some of the new boys go to their rooms. The older boys showed them pornography and told them to strip.
Fabian refused, and he reported the boys to the school, but they continued making life difficult for him. He comments ‘The anti-bullying procedure at school said all the right things but …’.
For this reason, he contacted Christopher, knowing that because he had recently attended the school, he knew some of the older boys. Fabian hoped Christopher might be able to intervene to make them leave him alone.
They began texting, and Fabian says ‘He gradually started putting kisses at the end of texts. It got more personal as time went on’. Because this happened gradually, he says, it was hard to see what was happening.
During the holidays, Fabian met up with Christopher. Christopher took Fabian to his room, locked the door and sexually abused him. Afterwards, Christopher gave him money for a taxi and he left. He says ‘I was upset and disoriented and didn’t know who to talk to’.
He adds that he would not have talked to his parents about what Christopher had done. He had told them what had happened with the older boys, but they did not really react. ‘When you’re at boarding school, things go on in your day to day life that your parents are tuned out of’, he says.
About a year later, Christopher got a job as a teacher at Fabian’s school. He continued texting Fabian and he organised dinners in school for the boys where alcohol was served.
Fabian says that Christopher built an image with other children ‘that he was cool’, and this made him sure that if he reported the abuse, he would not be believed. On top of this, Christopher emotionally blackmailed and intimidated Fabian, telling him sometimes that if he did report it that he would kill himself, or that he would tell everyone that Fabian was gay.
Fabian says the culture of the school was very homophobic, even though this was not long ago, and several staff made it clear they shared this view.
He says he was very quiet at school and found it hard to make friendships because he was preoccupied by the abuse. He says ‘Your relationships are stifled when there is something so big you can’t share with people’.
After school, Fabian went to university, but he declined a music scholarship because the abuse by Christopher put him off the subject.
He began having therapy and then reported Christopher to the police. The abuser was still teaching at the school. He pleaded guilty in court.
Fabian says the school tried to minimise the abuse by saying that it was a one-off incident, but Fabian feels it was much more than that – it was many years of grooming and emotional abuse. He has now had a personal apology from the new headmaster of the school, but not from the school where he met Christopher.
He feels strongly that no teacher should ever have contact with a pupil outside school, and he relates that Christopher was very active on social media, talking to and about a lot of the pupils.
Fabian says that homophobia created the conditions that allowed the abuse and the subsequent blackmail to happen, and he is concerned this is still the case in schools like the ones he attended. He says the schools’ aim ‘of making the children into independent people is not supportive’. He thinks that improved sex education lessons and pastoral support could help address this.
He believes that labelling of child abuse as ‘historic’ makes victims think that it is abuse that isn't happening now, and allows institutions to excuse it. He points out that criminal investigations take a long time, so abuse can always be labelled ‘historic’ when it becomes public.