29 days ago
Events in Edinburgh this week highlighted by Nicky Campbell, bring my mind back to historic abuse at my old school Warwick. The bastard who physically abused me, Geoffrey Eve, got a one way ticket to hell last year. But my long and, ultimately successful, campaign to get Warwick to name Eve and apologise lead to my involvement in exposing Warwick’s paedophile teachers. I have already named one, the music master Charles Watmough.
263 days ago
Eve abused me, twice throwing my head against a wall, one made of brick, the other of metal. As I have exposed with numerous articles on this website, in two spells at the school he abused countless little boys and Warwick covered up for him. And now he is dead. The current headmaster dropped me an email to let me know.
300 days ago
This week, after 12 years of campaigning, I finally got to see Warwick School admit, after years of denial, that historic abuse had taken place and it made a full apology to we victims in a letter sent to thousands of current parents and former pupils. Having been cold shouldered by certain former teachers and pupils for my efforts I slept well that night. But, on reflection, this not a time to let up because there is still unfinished business.
302 days ago
The letter below is being sent today to all parents of boys at Warwick School and to all OWs for whom Warwick has details. Twelve long years after I first raised the issue of the physical abuse I, and so many others, suffered at the hands of sadistic bastard Geoffrey, Geoff, Eve, during his two stints at the school, we are getting there with this public mea culpa. Last year Warwick apologised to Eve victims personally, accepting that our allegations were true. Now, for the first time, we get a very public and explicit acceptance from Warwick that it had problems with historic abuse. But we are only part way there.
421 days ago
Just over a month ago, I headed to Scarborough to confront a former music teacher at Warwick School who is a paedophile. Warwick covered up for him, ignoring complaints, and allowing him to head off to give private piano lessons in his own home after he left. Heaven only knows what went on in his front room in Scarborough. If you are an Old Warwickian (OW) who was at the old place in the last two decades of the last century I beg you to forward this article to any OWs you know for reasons I shall explain. The music teacher is one of at least 6 paedophile masters at Warwick from my era. There may have been more.
466 days ago
Geoffrey Eve smashed my head against a wall at Warwick School twice in the late 1970s. Those incidents were so horrific that I have almost blotted out the daily terror he instilled in me for one whole year. After more than ten years of campaigning, Warwick has privately apologised to me for the abuse I suffered as it has run an enquiry into historic sexual and physical abuse. Within two weeks, I plan to name a living teacher who sexually abused boys at Warwick and who Warwick protected.
472 days ago
I flagged up my latest piece on historic physical and sexual abuse at Warwick School to the current headmaster yesterday. He promised that he would listen to the excellent Alex Renton programme on Radio 4 last night. I listened with a glass of brandy in my hand thinking how much this reminded me of Warwick and almost in tears. It was very saddening but illuminating.
474 days ago
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.
603 days ago
My mind flashes back to that day in 1978, or perhaps it was 1977, when I was climbing out of the old outdoors pool at Warwick school, a place where penguins would have complained about the cold.
650 days ago
45 years ago I was pushed back into that freezing outdoor pool at Warwick School behind the “new gym” as I tried to haul myself out. There was no real malice by the three boys who did it (Petley R, Townsend & Moffatt A) but what happened was part of a culture of bullying which teachers just overlooked. Moffat A was, in particular, a real bully in my years in the junior school. Both his parents taught there and so that was just part of life, part of what made Warwick such an appalling place. On this occassion, my ankle caught between the iron bar that went around the pool and the edge of the pool. As I struggled for breath the ankle became horribly twisted. I could not walk for many weeks. It has never fully recovered.
788 days ago
Since 2011, I have been urging Warwick School to do something about historic physical and, latterly, sexual abuse of young boys. Two headmasters of Britain’s third oldest school swept the matter under the carpet but, to his credit, the new headmaster, James Barker, himself an OW, has done something. Barker, myself and governor Ruth Weekes had a long Zoom chat today and Warwick says that it believes my allegations against Eve, apologises for what happened and for its 41 years of failure in doing something about it. That was welcome. But that is not enough for Warwick is sitting on far worse secrets.
885 days ago
The Mrs and I both signed a sober and stern contract with Joshgua’s Ysgol in which, inter alia, we promised to drop him off at between 8.45 and 8.55 every morning except, of course, when the teachers were lying in bed ahead of yet another INSET day. I regret to say that in dropping himoff, one of my delights, I so often break the contract. We really have no excuse living just 500 yards from the school.
1071 days ago
We are now on the third headmaster at Warwick School since I first raised the issue of historic abuse. At that time, Geoffrey Eve, the man who twice smashed my head against the wall, was 86 but Gus Locke then Deneal Smith kicked the issue into the long grass. Now it seems as if James Barker, the new head and an OW himself, is intent on continuing the cover up culture.
1072 days ago
It was about four years after Geoffrey Eve twice slammed my head against the wall when this tale, relayed to me yesterday by a fellow Old Warwickian, occurred. The boys were 10 and in their final year of the Junior school waiting for the teacher to arrive and one piped up “where is Evo?”
1121 days ago
The reason that I have detailed numerous accounts of physical abuse of schoolboys at Warwick School by sadistic history teacher Geoffrey Eve is twofold: Firstly, I hope to make other victims realise that they are not alone. Secondly, it is for Warwick to accept its failure in terms of a duty of care in not only ignoring abuse but in covering it up. Now I have been made aware of the clearest and most shocking evidence of that cover-up culture and it concerns sexual abuse.
1122 days ago
It appears that after two years in the job, Deneal Smith is no longer headmaster at Warwick School, where 43 years ago sadistic brute Geoffrey Eve, a serial physical abuser of young boys, threw my head against the wall not once but twice. I reprint below Dr Smith’s last email to me, washing his hands of the whole affair. Perhaps new HM, James Barker, himself an OW, might – in light of revelations of Everyone’s Invited – actually deal with this issue.
1600 days ago
We started the day with three harvesters: myself and Shareprophets readers K and T1 and we started pretty much on time, the person normally latest to rise – myself – having been off the sauce the previous night – held no-one back. Then it was coffee and our usual healthy cereals and we were off to work. There were, however, concerns about the cat.
1614 days ago
My extensive coverage of Geoffrey Eve, the teacher who physically assaulted me twice when I was 10 has prompted two more victims to step forward, as the school continues its wilful denial of the scale of the abuse. I was almost in tears reading what happened to this man who, I am afraid I do not remember, but who was two years older than me. This testimony shows that Warwick has now covered up the Eve scandal three times in forty years.
1941 days ago
The Old Warwickian, the glossy quarterly for those of us who attended Warwick School, arrived just now. As ever it is full of pages of smiling rugger buggers and sporty young men of old and of the same fine fellows at OW receptions around the world today. I see a couple of my contemporaries (Alan Dee and Clark Sergeant) at a reunion last year. They are still recognisable but, like me, much older, Do I look that much older? Almost certainly yes. But I suspect I look far less respectable.
1999 days ago
On Friday I recounted harrowing new evidence of historic sexual abuse at my old school Warwick and feared that the new Head Master, Dr Deneal Smith, was set to do the same as his predecessor Gus Locke, that is to say more or less nothing. I judged the man harshly – he called me on Friday before reading my latest article.
2052 days ago
The irony referred to has nothing to do with the new Head Master of Warwick, Dr Smith but is at the foot of this article. Following lunch with my father in Shipston, Joshua and I headed back to my alma mater to discuss the sadistic abuser Geoffrey Eve and other matters.
2053 days ago
Amid a flurry of calls on various matters including an invitation to meet the new Headmaster at Warwick School tomorrow to discuss Geoffrey Eve and another abuser from the "good old days" - a matter on which I have received shocking new information overnight- I have received a call from the vets. The ashes of the King of Cats, Oakley, are in an urn and ready for collection.
2055 days ago
In the Greek summer heat my ankle causes me no problems. But my return to the colder British autumn nights sees it start to hurt, especially after a long drive, I stretch and it clicks audibly. The pain is minor but nagging. The final smash up was playing for London Irish (amateurs), it ended my undistinguished rugby career. Twelve years before that I had hurt it badly at Oxford playing basketball. But the initial weakness was caused by that incident in the freezing outdoor pool at Warwick School aged 8 or 9. It was bullying by other boys and the physical scar is still with me. And so I think of my old school, of the master who threw my head against the wall twice, Mr Geoffrey Eve, and of the cover up that continues to this day. I had another nightmare about it all last night.
2446 days ago
I have written a number of times about Geoffrey Eve, a sadistic bastard who is still alive but who in the 1970s and 1980s physically, not sexually, abused a number of boys at Warwick School. I was one of them. Twice Eve worked himself up into such a furious rage that he threw my head against a wall. Earlier this year I went to the Police.
2527 days ago
After almost six weeks away in London, Sweden and then Greece I had a good stack of mail to wade through. At the bottom of the pile was the Old Warwickian, the glossy mag for we schola warwicensis of days gone by. And to its enormous credit it has finally acknowledged, albeit almost sote voice, the issues of abuse from the "old days."
2618 days ago
This is physical abuse not sexual abuse but it is still very serious. I detailed the abuse I suffered here and that prompted a second victim to come forward here. Now a third boy has stepped forward.
2619 days ago
Two and a bit weeks ago I relayed on this website details of a meeting that I had with the current Head Master of Warwick School to discuss physical abuse that I suffered at the hands of a teacher Geoffrey Eve 38 years ago. The HM said swift action would be taken as Eve is still alive. I have heard nothing since but now another former pupil has stepped forward to recount his memories of Mr Eve. This scandal will grow and Warwick needs to address it rapidly for it is a scandal not only about abuse but about the way the School covered it all up so ensuring more boys suffered.
2635 days ago
The Headmaster's study at Warwick School is still in the old Victorian part of the school pictured below. Next door is the chapel which we visited and which has changed little. The names of those boys who lead their men over the top from the front, as second Lieutenants, in both wars stand proudly. It was that rank, the public schoolboy rank, that suffered the most heavily in the first war and that roll call of honour is a long one.
2635 days ago
The current abuse scandal of the day concerns young men from Winchester College who were beaten savagely at some Christian camp attended by the current Archbishop of Canterbury wet Justin Welby. As if to make the scandal even more at the heart of the establishment Cathy Newman of Channel 4 Fake News told us that Winchester was Britain's oldest public school. In a sort of post fact era maybe. It was founded in 1382.
3016 days ago
It was my second year at Warwick Junior School and somehow, when we were streamed at the end of year one, I had managed to make it into the A stream and so joined Tony Wilkins (Mr Wilkins or AMW) in Upper 2W. My School report from that year has been unearthed by my father and it is not very impressive. In fact, poor would be a more accurate description.
To be fair, I was the only boy who had joined in the Lower 2s, most boys joined in the First form so they had an edge on me in that my State Primary (Byfield) was a dire hotbed of academic under-achievment. I suspect that the death of my mother in 1977 did not help matters and I did not like Mr Wilkins and I think that it was mutual. I had been very find of Mrs Hobday (Lower2s) and was also a great fan of my form master in 3A, Keith Winterbottom, but underperformed in the year between as this report makes clear. Number in class 25. Position in term 22, Position in exam 11. Never again did I suffer such a rotten year.
For each subject the report laid out your term and exam position and a grade for Attainment and for Effort from E = Excellent through G = Good to S = Satisfactory via W = Weak to NS = Not Satisfactory before your subject master added a few words. I am pleased to say that, even in the 1978 year, I racked up no NS or W grades although there is an S- for effort in Nature/Science "Another rather disappointing term's work
