I don't know when you were at CH but from your comments I sense it was after me. I never met either Poulton or Cairncross and Sillett was just the housemaster of LHB; as far as I can recall I never even spoke to him. I knew both Webb and Burr reasonably well and all I am saying is that I am pretty sure that, even if some suspected, few if any actually knew what they were up to, or maybe at the time they weren't actually doing anything. This is perfectly possible; this period was, I think, after Robert's terrible experiences but before whatever caused Webb to be fired.Avon wrote: ↑Mon Sep 23, 2019 9:32 pm No.
There is sufficient evidence to suggest that there was institutional awareness of these things, such that, on occasion, a blind eye was turned. In at least one case the victim was silenced.
It’s not enough to make the assumption that things have changed, that there are fundamentally nicer people in charge these days and better governance and checks. People aren’t fundamentally nicer, we’re British, we don’t do governance and checks particularly well.
It’s the same CH. In hock to the doctrine of ‘it’s all part of the pageant’, fawningly in awe of being ‘royal, religious and ancient’ and spending money it hasn’t got. The School has the cheek to refuse to engage with my generation and tell us why Poulton, Sillett, Cairncross et al were so incompetent, and yet send me clumsy yet chiding requests for money at the same time?
This site is my place to tell them to go **** themselves. And I know they are reading this.
Whatever the truth of the matter is, and no doubt it will all come out in the end, the school has legally to be very careful in what it says to you or, indeed, any other Old Blue. I have mixed views on whether they should be engaging with any Old Blues on this subject at all except through individual victims' lawyers. We have already seen from Robin Durrant's posts the damage that incomplete information and misunderstandings can do.
You are entirely at liberty to tell CH to go **** itself but my view remains that there is far more that is good than bad about the institution. Those of us who were not abused and who received a far better education than we would have received elsewhere are both in the majority and should be grateful for our good fortune.
Actually, I think we do governance and checks pretty well overall; we are one of no more than a slack handful of countries where there is actually 'rule of law'. With that in mind, and backed up by my own experience of safeguarding in state education, I would suggest that this is something that the school's current SMT as well as teachers and other staff members take very seriously indeed.
Of course these are just my views.