It is not often hat I urge anyone to listen to the BBC. But at 8 PM tonight the excellent Alex Renton has a new programme on historic sexual abuse at the UK’s public schools. I urge the staff, Governors and Headmaster of my old school Warwick to listen to Radio 4 very carefullty. For the issue at hand is how schools covered up and protected abusers and Warwick is guilty of that to an extraordinary degree.
My own abuse at the hands of sadistic Geoffrey Eve was physical. After eleven years of campaigning Warwick started an enquiry and has now apologised in private to those like me the victims of Eve, that is those who came forward. It accepts that our complaints were valid. But it has not publicly accepted that there was a problem with Eve or other physical abusers and so most victims just suffer alone as I did for years, perhaps thinking that they somehow “asked for it”, too ashamed to complain as they were somehow special.
And it is the same with historic sexual abuse at Warwick which the enquiry is also looking into. I have now had first hand accounts of the activities of at least five paedophile teachers who were at Warwick between the 1970s and 2000. Two are dead, two alive and I am still enquiring about a fifth.
Warwick has never publicly accepted that it had a problem with paedophiles either acting as individuals or in a ring. Indeed, in a letter sent to all pupils it celebrated the fact that it had not become involved in the sort of enquiry that had beset other public schools. That sort of smug and infuriating ( for we victims) message sends a clear signal to victims of abuse “you were unique”, it actively discourages them from coming forward. It was dishonest and it is counterproductive.
Renton’s programme tonight discusses how public schools let paedophile teachers off the hook, often giving them glowing references to help them move on. Warwick is aware of the five paedophile teachers. It has a valid reason for not acting yet about one of them and that same reason is why I shall not name him yet. But it has no excuse on the other four. Its own records show a mother complaining about one of them who is still alive, Mr X. If it were to open up and say that it had a historic problem with all sorts of abuse then, there is no doubt in my mind, that more victims would come forward.
Mr X is a man about whom three boys complained. But he taught at Warwick for well over a decade before moving on with glowing references to a position where he was also like a kid in a sweet shop. Does anyone seriously think that he only abused three little boys while at Warwick?
2023 is the year this has to stop. I hope that the Warwick establishment listens to Mr Renton tonight and collectively decides to open up and accept that there was a problem with abuse of all sorts and a cover up which protected the abusers. If it does not, as my own New Year Resolution, I am now making arrangements to go and pay Mr X a visit later this month and will then name him as I also start to name the other known Warwick perverts. I have all the details of Mr X and so know where to go. Warwick claims that it does not know whether he is dead or alive. It shrugs its shoulders and carries on. I hope that naming the Warwick paedophiles might get more victims coming forward and, at some stage, even Warwick School will have to act and admit the scale of its historic problems.