by There was muted cheering among other residential school survivors this week after Charles Spencer spoke about the sexual abuse he suffered at the hands of a matron’s assistant.
“It’s a really helpful show because this particular type of abuse is hardly talked about,” said Jon Bird, head of knowledge and insights at the National Association for the Abused of Youth.
“Many will experience similar abuse at the hands of their school matrons but have not talked about it because it is so difficult for anyone, especially men, to talk about sexual abuse if the perpetrator is a woman,” he said.
Bird said he thought it was unusual for a matron to sexually abuse boys: “I think it was very rare compared to the much more common abuse by male teachers,” he said. . “But it happened and it was terrible in its own unique way,” because boys were torn from mothers at such a young age, he said.
Sarah, who attended a boarding school in the early 1970s, said the matron was used to give the girls intrusive physical examinations, she said, to see if they were menstruating.
Related: ‘I don’t think I’ve developed emotionally’: Earl Spencer on the pain of boarding school abuse
“This woman was dirty,” she said. “On our first day, my friend’s mother told a matron that my friend didn’t like milk. Matron was pleasant to the mother but as soon as she left matron forced my friend to drink a glass of milk. My friend was sick there and a matron cleaned him up.”
One man remembers “extended bath times by a matron and a lot of unnecessary picking and handling of us young boys” when he was at boarding school between the ages of eight and 13 in the mid-1960s.
“There was definitely a sexual side to the corporate punishment she served as well,” he said. “She would put her rings to face the stones in, then she would bring the smacks to our bare skin until it bled.
“People always say it’s extremely 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 big impact on me: these are formative things in the beginning of my life and they shape you.”
Bird, who has worked with residential school survivors for 23 years, said it must have been very common for matrons to be involved in the abuse of pupils by male teachers.
“Matrons must have known male teachers to come into the shower when the boys were there or they were so close to the sexual and physical abuse of children so often that they didn’t know what it was. underway,” he said.
Alex Renton, who has helped fellow residential school survivors through direct support, his books, articles and BBC Radio 4 series, In Dark Corners, re-examined his database of 1,200 allegations from residential school survivors following Earl Spencer’s allegations. He found 11 accounts of sexual or physical abuse by mothers and nurses in the data.
But, he said, references to matrons dealing with pedophiliac male teachers are much higher.
“These stories are important because British children are still vulnerable in residential care,” he said. “There is still no clear duty in law to report or suspect child sexual abuse – and 170,000 children are still living away from family, in state or private care.”
The government has promised new ‘mandatory reporting’ legislation 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 the sexual abuse of vulnerable children, fails to protect whistleblowers and will leave the UK lagging behind most other countries on child protection.
Paul was at a boarding school between 1968 and 1971. He said that the sexual abuse by his principal could not have happened without his mother’s coercion.
“She lived above the principal’s bedroom, where he abused a stream of boys,” he said. “There’s no way she didn’t know what was going on. He pulled us aside many times for abuse and she was so close she didn’t know.”
Terry, who went to boarding school at the age of eight, was told by his mother that the matron would be a kind mother figure to him.
“But it was clear on my first night that the matron was far from motherly when she entered our dorm yelling at us for not folding our socks perfectly. None of us knew how to fold our socks so we all got punished that first night: a dose of disgusting cough medicine,” he said.
“The punishments progressed until she was sending us to the deputy head for the slightest infraction. He was a relentless pedophile and therefore he was being sent to us to be abused,” he said.
“There’s no way the matron didn’t know that: it was a very small school – only 90 of us and eight resident teachers. She knew what she was sending when she chose us for punishment because of the small infractions,” he said. “As an adult thinking about it now, I wonder if he didn’t even ask her to send us to him.”
All case study names have been changed
• In the UK, the NSPCC offers support for children on 0800 1111, and for adults worried about a child on 0808 800 5000. The National Association for the Abuse of Children (Napac) offers support for adult survivors on 0808 801 0331. In the US, call or text the Childhelp abuse hotline at 800-422-4453. In Australia, children, young adults, parents and teachers can contact the Children’s Helpline on 1800 55 1800; adult survivors can seek help from Blue Knot Foundation on 1300 657 380. Other sources of help can be found at Child Helplines International
