There were muted cheers among other boarding school survivors this week after Charles Spencer spoke of the sexual abuse he suffered at the hands of an assistant matron.
“It’s an incredibly helpful revelation because this specific sort of abuse is hardly ever spoken of,” said Jon Bird, head of knowledge and insight at the National Association for People Abused in Childhood.
“Many will have experienced similar abuse at the hands of their school matrons but never spoken about it because it’s so difficult for anyone, men in particular, to talk about sexual abuse if the perpetrator is a woman,” he added.
Bird said he thought it was unusual for a matron to sexually abuse boys: “I think it was quite rare compared to the much more common abuse by male teachers,” he said. “But it did happen and it was appalling in its own, unique way,” because boys were torn away from mothers at such a young age, he added.
Sarah, who attended boarding school in the early 1970s, said the matron used to give the girls intrusive physical examinations to, she said, see whether they were menstruating.
“This woman was vile,” she said. “On our first day, my friend’s mother told matron that my friend didn’t like milk. Matron was charming to the mother but as soon as she left, matron forced my friend to drink a glass of milk. My friend was then sick and matron made her clear it up.”
One man remembers “extended bath times by matron with a lot of lingering and unnecessary handling of us young boys” when he was at boarding school from between the ages of eight and 13 in the mid-1960s.
“The corporate punishment she dispensed definitely had a sexual side too,” he added. “She would turn her rings so the stones faced inwards, then deliver the smacks to our bare backsides until blood was let.
“People always say that it’s incredibly rare for women to be sexual abusers but I look back and think, ‘What was going on there if it wasn’t sexual?’,” he said. “It has a deep effect on me: these are formative things in one’s early life and they shape you.”
Bird, who has worked with boarding school survivors for 23 years, said that it must have been very common for matrons to be complicit in the abuse of pupils by male teachers.
“Matrons must have known and commonly ‘gave the nod’ to male teachers to come into the shower area when the boys were in there or were regularly in such close proximity to children’s sexual and physical abuse that they can’t not have known what was going on,” he said.
Alex Renton, who has helped fellow boarding school survivors through direct support, his books, articles and a BBC Radio 4 series, In Dark Corners, re-examined his database of 1,200 allegations from boarding school survivors after Earl Spencer’s allegations. He found 11 accounts of sexual abuse or extreme physical abuse by matrons and nurses in the data.
But, he said, references to matrons colluding with paedophiliac male teachers are far higher.
“These stories are important because British children remain uniquely vulnerable in residential care,” he said. “There’s still no clear duty in law to report sexual abuse of a child or suspicion of that – and Britain still has 170,000 children living away from family, in state or private care.”
The government has promised new legislation for ‘mandatory reporting’ in the criminal justice bill now going through parliament. But campaigners say the Home Office’s response to the recommendations of the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse is weak, fails to protect whistleblowers and will leave UK lagging behind most other countries on child protection.
Paul was at boarding school between 1968 and 1971. He said the sexual abuse meted out by his headteacher could not have happened without the complicity of his matron.
“She lived above the headmaster’s bedroom, where he abused a stream of little boys,” he said. “There is no way she couldn’t have known what was going on. There were numerous times when he pulled us aside for abuse and she was in such close proximity that she couldn’t not have known.”
Terry, who went to boarding school at eight, was told by his mother that the matron would be a mother figure who would be kind to him.
“But it became obvious on my first night that the matron was far from a mother figure when she burst into our dorm shouting at us for not folding our socks perfectly. None of us knew how to fold our socks and so we all got a punishment on that first night: a dose of disgusting cough medicine,” he said.
“The punishments moved on until she was sending us to the deputy head for even the smallest infringement. He was a relentless paedophile and so sending us there, was sending us to be abused,” he said.
“There’s no way the matron wouldn’t have known that: it was a very small school – just 90 of us and eight resident teachers. She knew what she was sending to when she picked us out for punishment for these tiny infractions,” he added. “As an adult thinking about it now, I even wonder if he didn’t ask her to send us to him.”
All case study names have been changed
• In the UK, the NSPCC offers support to children on 0800 1111, and adults concerned about a child on 0808 800 5000. The National Association for People Abused in Childhood (Napac) offers support for adult survivors on 0808 801 0331. In the US, call or text the Childhelp abuse hotline on 800-422-4453. In Australia, children, young adults, parents and teachers can contact the Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800; adult survivors can seek help at Blue Knot Foundation on 1300 657 380. Other sources of help can be found at Child Helplines International
