AMP wrote: ↑Sun Feb 27, 2022 9:06 am
dsm wrote: ↑Sun Feb 27, 2022 8:31 am
AMP- you were punched in the face repeatedly until the House Captain broke his wrist??? What??? Sounds like Nazi Germany or a Gulag rather than a school in Sussex in the 90s! Your face must have been a bl**dy mess by the time he broke his wrist. What did matron, other masters, less sadistic monitors have to say?
Not me. I was quoting another boy who had posted about his horrendous experiences on the Corporal Punishment thread on this forum some years ago.
And he recently posted on the Elizabeth Cairncross thread that she had liked eight of his tweets!
I think his name is Duncan and he suffered terribly at the school.He is now a community pastor and abuse advocate.
Hi just saw this thread years later! So thought I would bering some clarification especially to where I've been quoted here. Yes, it was me who years ago wrote about some of the beatings in Peele B and A.
I was on my squits in 1987 in Peele B. The 3rd form, LE and UF were very violent towards us. Maddren would turn a blind eye to this. Maddren once saw an LE beating me up and saw me hit the LE back, Maddren made a snarky comment and then left the dorm, presumably knowing that I would then get further beaten up by the LE for my 'insubordination.' Maddren was very strict about minutia, but not about caring for our welfare. For example when my housey jumper was stolen in the winter, I started wearing my cricket jumper under my housey coat to keep warm. Maddren reprimanded me for this and did nothing to help me get a jumper to stay warm.
Maddren was dismissive when I reported sexual assault to him on my squits.
Maddren would crack us with his green flash trainer and his infamous run up (opening his study door to his house to get a long run up. Flemming was house tutor at the time and would crack us on our backside with a slipper and a big smile on his face. One day an LE got me in a headlock and started basking my head against the metal frame that we hung our cloths on (connected to the benches). Flemming walked in and shouted the older boys name and just let him walk off without any discipline.
These older boys then went automatically up into Peele A where Jeffers was house master.
The rumours were that Jeffers was drunk all the time, and had no control. From Peele B, us juniors would watch the seniors brewing (demi-johns in the window), having toga parties, and being drunk.
The summer term of my LE in Peele B, I was getting ready to go up into Peele A (where Jeffers was doing his final year as house master). I had a walkman, and one day was listening to it and suddenly there was a recording over the tape saying, "Forbes your days are numbered in Peele A." I was told they would kick the living sh*t out of me when I arrive.
When I did go up to my UF in Peele A (1990), it was Jim Endacott's first year as housemaster there. It was also a very brutal year. I was physically and sexually abused by older boys. There was also a lot of emotional abuse. And the level of boccaring (fagging) was off the chart. Every morning I had to serve the Grecian I was allocated to with tea and toast in bed. Then in my break time and every other bit of free time I'd have to make tea and toast for the older boys and do other jobs. I remember most weekends just constantly doing jobs for the older boys. But the older boys kept telling me, "You havn't got it as bad as we had it." So us UF were told that it had been worse when Jeffers was around. The deps and Grecians also took our lunch and dinner most of the time. Even when CH switched to canteen style serving, it just meant the older boys told us to queue up and give them our portions. I wonder how they had been treated when they were UK in Peele A during Jeffers years?
I got very tough on my UF. Then on my GE (1991), Jim Endacott asked myself and another boy to help stamp out the boccaring in the house. So when I saw boys on the GE or Deps asking the UF (the year below me) to do jobs for them, I'd intervene. That didn't stamp out boccaring but it did decrease it. But physical bullying still went on.
It was on my GE, that the house captain repeatedly punched me in the face until he broke his wrist. I had come in the boarding house late in the evening. So he shouted at me and marched me up the fire escape stairs, and then from behind tried to smash my head into the window of the door to the dorm. I moved my head and it went into the wooden frame instead. Then inside the dorm, from one end of the dorm (the fire escape) he repeatedly punched me in the face whilst I walked backwards towards the middle of the dorm. I was a boxer and I kept wanting to duck under his punches and give him a left hook, but I knew if I did his whole year would beat me up, so I just kept walking backwards, tilting my face with each punch so that they glanced off more than properly impacting me. Once we got to the halfway point of the door, I just stood my ground and glared at him, and his wrist broken and he gave up. He then went to the sicker and got his arm put in a cast.
Jim never would have known about this, and definately would not have condoned it. House captains were not allowed to use physical punishments.
From my perspective, Jim gradually brought about a significant change in the culture of Peele A from 1990-94. He was the first in-loco-parentis house master who was a caring father figure to me. I really owe a lot to him. I cannot imagine having got through Peele A and CH without him.
Lastly, and just as an aside, in contrast to what I wrote years ago on this forum, I do now see major problems with corporal punishment in schools. It's because of my own journey with counselling, and then training to become a trauma counsellor that I made this shift.
