LONDON – A childhood lived in the name of cruelty, abandonment and physical and mental abuse. Charles Spencer, ninth earl of an ancient lineage, brother of Diana, godson of Queen Elizabeth, owner of an immense estate near Northampton, with a book of testimony removes the veil from what he considers the scourge of various generations of the aristocracy and the wealthy class in the United Kingdom: the abuse suffered at the hands of sadistic headteachers and teachers in private schools.
“Violence suffered at school has the same impact on brain development as being taken away from one’s parents,” the count explained to the Times. “You feel completely alone and abandoned.” His book, A Very Private School, presented yesterday, leaves little to the imagination and was gratefully received by a number of Spencer’s friends, acquaintances and colleagues as well as various members of the same social class: on social media the Conte shared a letter sent to him by a former schoolmate. «Well done for finding the inner strength and determination to write this book and expose the terrifying catalog of abuse we have suffered. I hope it helps others get rid of the demons they carry inside.”
In Spencer’s case, the violence occurred at Maidwell, the boarding school where he was sent at the age of 8 and where he remained until 13, when he moved to Eton, but for the Earl it is a systemic problem, in which the school was regarded as the best way to “mold the children of the empire, cauterizing the children’s emotions so that they could serve wherever they were sent without feeling the melancholy of home.” The book is a work that took the count five years to write, a period during which he at times rediscovered the suffering of childhood, with “the migraines, palpitations and nightmares” from which he suffered as a child .
It is a book, he underlined, that he wrote for himself and for the other victims of what he considers “a collective trauma” and of the silence in which he was shrouded: “the great conspiracy” of the upper classes. “We were like lambs taken to the slaughterhouse.” In particular Maidwell’s headmaster, John Porch, ‘was an openly sadistic presence’. “He clearly derived physical pleasure from inflicting extremely painful punishments. There was blood, there were cuts on the buttocks, there were bruises, there was indecent groping. After dinner the first victim was brought to him. We all knew what was going to happen.”
Spencer wonders what the effect of schools like his has been on the country’s political class. «I am sure – he said – that many of our politicians were damaged in some way as children. It’s logical that this leaves scars and changes the way you view life, the world, what matters and what doesn’t. It’s a dog-eat-dog environment that can only teach a certain cruelty.”
2024-03-15 19:58:52
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