With all that is going on domestically and across the globe at the moment why on earth is Laura devoting time to this relatively arcane issue this morning?
His interview in the Times yesterday was bizarre with the claim he went to a prostitute aged 12 on a trip to Italy with his parents. At that age I’m not sure I knew what a prostitute was and certainly not where to find one in a foreign country.
I have a feeling that in old skool aristocratic families dad would quite often arrange a whore for his son once he thought the time was right - presumably if there wasn’t an obliging servant girl on the household staff.
It was all the earnest trauma about being caned at boarding school.
I mean ffs. It’s not even a first world problem. And then the good guy bit about giving his 7 kids the option of going boarding or day only. Wot a progressive ledge.
That did happen right? LK giving 20 minutes of soft focus tea and tissues interviewing on the this tosh. Who the fook is editing and scheduling this crap
You know what we haven’t done recently, it’s the trauma the landed gentry went through in the 60s and 70s in British public schools. This is so remiss of us. Let’s just park getting Diane Abbot in, Lord knows we’ve all heard enough about her this week, and get that Charles Spencer chap in to blub a bit about his sore bottom.
I also struggle to believe that in the ten years between him going to school and me going to school that all the child beating sadists just happened to retire.
I don’t much like the guy but the idea he has made all this stuff up is a bit much tbh. He has nothing really to gain from doing so. It is beyond doubt that many boarding schools of that period were awful abusive places.
If a 10 year kid is raped by a predatory teacher, does ROF now proudly judge its impact by the fees paid for the school and more incredulously, the more the fees? Are your politics really so invasive of your sense of justice?
Some years ago I was driving home, when in a heart stopping moment I heard on the BBC news the name of the teacher who had assaulted me as a 10 year old kid, at a low ranking fee paying school (if you wish to apply the above test). I located the court hearing which had been adjourned on the day and attended when it went to trial, where he pleaded.
The teacher's crimes were widespread and at their more extreme on a scale of what Spencer experienced. I had got off very lightly compared to my peers, five of whom were also there to witness the process. I was not seriously impacted by what happened, but my peers certainly were, having raised the complaint 40 or so years after they were buggered by this paedophile, and having had to live with the indignity for so long.
I recently located some web chat about my school's paedo and there were some who like the sceptics above who disbelieved the boys. I'm sure they would have felt differently if his dick had been up their arse. I'm sure sceptics here might have been less sceptical too had they been on the receiving end.
Oh I don’t doubt he may as were many have been a victim. Just that he spends all his time complaining about anything and everything. It’s not as if he lives in a council house.
Do people realise that it’s not uncommon for stories about slebs (whether they be royal, actors etc) to sit side by side with actual news? This isn’t a new thing.
If it was a male teacher he said did it I’d have no problem believing it. Because that was common. But this was meant to be a female matron and then there’s this thing about him using a Parisian hooker at 13 while with his parents. Doesn’t that seem a little less likely?
I didn't watch the Spencer interview, but I do think his form has resulted in the lack of sympathy. He has huge unearned wealth and has spent many years weeping to order, maintaining a profile based on his sister's marriage. Now he has brand new stories and a book to sell it is difficult to reframe the general view of him as a grifter.
Women abuse children as well Crypto. It's less common but it happens and (particularly when the victims are boys) is still often ignored/belittled/joked about. I don't see any reason to disbelieve him just based on that.
With the Parisian hooker I do wonder if his memory is playing tricks on him about his age at the time. Much easier to believe at age 13 or 14 than age 12.
I don’t have any agenda for or against him. I do think there are leagues of paedophiles in quiet retirement from their supposedly respectable careeers who should be doing time. If he has prompted more people to think about belated justice then good. That’s my take on it and only that.
I am sad to read some of the comments on this thread.
I read and listened to the coverage of his tale and raised my eyebrows in a mix of understanding and contemplation.
One thing I don’t judge is the question of ‘when’ someone is ready to talk about abuse in childhood.
I think there is a stage at some point in your life’s journey where you want to stop suffering the pain of carrying the weight secretly and you want to talk about it to make it their wrong not your burden. When is entirely, entirely subjective.
That has certainly been my approach to it all. I was a minor victim ( by comparison with others but it didn’t feel minor then or after) of a predatory paedophile teacher who was convicted of nearly 50 counts in 2003, at three schools. Truly horrible. The details are too disturbing to recount here.
I was a child in someone’ ls care. He took my merry childhood and made me a defensive, sometimes aggressive, solitary, heavily self-reliant, cautious person who craved love and care and could not reconcile my family’s warmth with the risk they exposed me to. I took away that nobody- not even Mum and Dad - would be there when the chips were down. You were on your own, like in death. Learn that at ten and the road after that is not an easy one. I have forever after put on a thick protective layer of humour which, like so much blubber, protects me from the chill waters of isolation. Let’s all laugh and relieve the pressure because the tears and anger are at 15 bar.
The process you go through in life once this has happened is complex and difficult. There can be no prescription of timing and obligation of candour or confession. I don’t think there can therefore be any objective criticism of how or when that is talked about.
Imagine all that and then the loss of a beloved sister in the most public and horrendous of ways after your parents are gone and you are then even more alone.
If he has shortcomings which he surely does then perhaps he is recognising them and rationalising the source of some and redemptive process of confronting those issues.
I know nothing of private schools, they sound like a risky place to send children in the past, away from any real oversight. The number of people with awful experiences is quite high.
However the nanny story made me snort. If you think kids having their heads banged together is anything other than utterly normal until about the late 80s, that is privilege.
I have always thought he was a person who had the benefit of more airtime than he deserved and her death gave him a cause when it should have given him reason to disappear back into the shadows. And that may still be the case but I dont think one can legitimately take issue with a person’s expression of their pain and its causes. He clearly has many issues to deal with.
Sorry, this has all hit a nerve. Yesterday I was passing the very place where it all happened for me back in the 70s. So I went in. I walked round the school and it threw a lot of stuff in the air for me. First time since leaving in 1981.
Sails, forgive the impertinence, and I appreciate that this comment is based on posts only and I do not know you one bit*, but I read your approach to engagement, pain, needs etc as being very intentionally independent and unaccountable, almost resentful of encroachment, suspiciously assertive of everything being alright Jack, to a point where I suspect that this is an impregnable fortress inside which dwells someone with no fewer foibles and scars than the rest of us.
*so, on balance, it is a worthless observation, other than to say I see you and life is tricky
I also struggle to believe that in the ten years between him going to school and me going to school that all the child beating sadists just happened to retire.
saillaw, you must appreciate that other people have different experiences to you.
A lot of the reactions to this seem insane. Is it the "I was molested/abandoned/beaten and it never did me any harm no it didn't it didn't IT DIDN'T" phenomenon?
It matters because it matters - whether the child victim was rich or poor or nice or annoying as an adult but also and most importantly sorry to be selfish because the people who now control our world were apparently at risk of being sodomised as infants and it has made them insane and and we need to recognise that and try to find a way to stop it from bringing our world down further.
It's not just one random posho's tale. As he said, Boris was at Eton at the same time.
Mutts a few foibles but no scars. Really just a scenario where there's nothing really left in life the feels scary or challenging so I just happily potter along unfazed by most of it. If anything I get the odd craving to go and do something extraordinary just to feel a little bit of fear again.
Kimmy the vast majority of my friends were privately educated around ten years after Spencer. None of them came across teachers who would cut down garden canes to draw blood for their own sexual arousal and indeed most private schools by then had already voluntarily banned corporal punishment. That seems to be a huge change of mindset in a relatively short space of time. Just chance that all the sadists happened to retire in the late 1970's just before me and my friends went to school?
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His interview in the Times yesterday was bizarre with the claim he went to a prostitute aged 12 on a trip to Italy with his parents. At that age I’m not sure I knew what a prostitute was and certainly not where to find one in a foreign country.
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I have a feeling that in old skool aristocratic families dad would quite often arrange a whore for his son once he thought the time was right - presumably if there wasn’t an obliging servant girl on the household staff.
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I just don’t believe him.
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It's probably true but he's an attention seeking bore. It also won't be good PR for public schools, which are already suffering enough.
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It was all the earnest trauma about being caned at boarding school.
I mean ffs. It’s not even a first world problem. And then the good guy bit about giving his 7 kids the option of going boarding or day only. Wot a progressive ledge.
That did happen right? LK giving 20 minutes of soft focus tea and tissues interviewing on the this tosh. Who the fook is editing and scheduling this crap
You know what we haven’t done recently, it’s the trauma the landed gentry went through in the 60s and 70s in British public schools. This is so remiss of us. Let’s just park getting Diane Abbot in, Lord knows we’ve all heard enough about her this week, and get that Charles Spencer chap in to blub a bit about his sore bottom.
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I also struggle to believe that in the ten years between him going to school and me going to school that all the child beating sadists just happened to retire.
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The sex stuff seems fictional.
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He’s obviously just a c unt.
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I don’t much like the guy but the idea he has made all this stuff up is a bit much tbh. He has nothing really to gain from doing so. It is beyond doubt that many boarding schools of that period were awful abusive places.
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Ever since he tried to hog the limelight at Diana’s funeral I’ve never liked the bloke.
Didn’t see the interview, but did he cry on camera as required.
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If a 10 year kid is raped by a predatory teacher, does ROF now proudly judge its impact by the fees paid for the school and more incredulously, the more the fees? Are your politics really so invasive of your sense of justice?
Some years ago I was driving home, when in a heart stopping moment I heard on the BBC news the name of the teacher who had assaulted me as a 10 year old kid, at a low ranking fee paying school (if you wish to apply the above test). I located the court hearing which had been adjourned on the day and attended when it went to trial, where he pleaded.
The teacher's crimes were widespread and at their more extreme on a scale of what Spencer experienced. I had got off very lightly compared to my peers, five of whom were also there to witness the process. I was not seriously impacted by what happened, but my peers certainly were, having raised the complaint 40 or so years after they were buggered by this paedophile, and having had to live with the indignity for so long.
I recently located some web chat about my school's paedo and there were some who like the sceptics above who disbelieved the boys. I'm sure they would have felt differently if his dick had been up their arse. I'm sure sceptics here might have been less sceptical too had they been on the receiving end.
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Oh I don’t doubt he may as were many have been a victim. Just that he spends all his time complaining about anything and everything. It’s not as if he lives in a council house.
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Chippy, sneery ROF at its finest on this one.
Do people realise that it’s not uncommon for stories about slebs (whether they be royal, actors etc) to sit side by side with actual news? This isn’t a new thing.
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If it was a male teacher he said did it I’d have no problem believing it. Because that was common. But this was meant to be a female matron and then there’s this thing about him using a Parisian hooker at 13 while with his parents. Doesn’t that seem a little less likely?
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kaulbach 17 Mar 24 09:43
....why on earth is Laura devoting time to this relatively arcane issue this morning?
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
it's because The Gentlemen is popular on Netflix
I shit you not, BBC HQ was trying to tap into that zeitgeist and as ever with prime time BBC management completely missed the mark
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That's awful PS.
I didn't watch the Spencer interview, but I do think his form has resulted in the lack of sympathy. He has huge unearned wealth and has spent many years weeping to order, maintaining a profile based on his sister's marriage. Now he has brand new stories and a book to sell it is difficult to reframe the general view of him as a grifter.
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Yes, I’m not sure Charles Spencer is the right man for tapping into that.
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Women abuse children as well Crypto. It's less common but it happens and (particularly when the victims are boys) is still often ignored/belittled/joked about. I don't see any reason to disbelieve him just based on that.
With the Parisian hooker I do wonder if his memory is playing tricks on him about his age at the time. Much easier to believe at age 13 or 14 than age 12.
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I believe he was abused but also believe he’s exaggerated it to excuse his other shortcomings.
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I don’t have any agenda for or against him.
I do think there are leagues of paedophiles in quiet retirement from their supposedly respectable careeers who should be doing time.
If he has prompted more people to think about belated justice then good. That’s my take on it and only that.
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Yeah, we need to remember the real victims in this - the tax-exempt dickhead factories.
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I am sad to read some of the comments on this thread.
I read and listened to the coverage of his tale and raised my eyebrows in a mix of understanding and contemplation.
One thing I don’t judge is the question of ‘when’ someone is ready to talk about abuse in childhood.
I think there is a stage at some point in your life’s journey where you want to stop suffering the pain of carrying the weight secretly and you want to talk about it to make it their wrong not your burden. When is entirely, entirely subjective.
That has certainly been my approach to it all. I was a minor victim ( by comparison with others but it didn’t feel minor then or after) of a predatory paedophile teacher who was convicted of nearly 50 counts in 2003, at three schools. Truly horrible. The details are too disturbing to recount here.
I was a child in someone’ ls care. He took my merry childhood and made me a defensive, sometimes aggressive, solitary, heavily self-reliant, cautious person who craved love and care and could not reconcile my family’s warmth with the risk they exposed me to. I took away that nobody- not even Mum and Dad - would be there when the chips were down. You were on your own, like in death. Learn that at ten and the road after that is not an easy one. I have forever after put on a thick protective layer of humour which, like so much blubber, protects me from the chill waters of isolation. Let’s all laugh and relieve the pressure because the tears and anger are at 15 bar.
The process you go through in life once this has happened is complex and difficult. There can be no prescription of timing and obligation of candour or confession. I don’t think there can therefore be any objective criticism of how or when that is talked about.
Imagine all that and then the loss of a beloved sister in the most public and horrendous of ways after your parents are gone and you are then even more alone.
Have some compassion and perspective.
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If he has shortcomings which he surely does then perhaps he is recognising them and rationalising the source of some and redemptive process of confronting those issues.
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I wasn't abused but I'm I'm a solitary heavily self-reliant person who doesn't crave love and care. That seems to just be who I am.
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Congratulations
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I look at him and just think if it wasn't for who his sister married hardly anyone would have a clue who he is and even less people actually care
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Yes agreed. But she did.
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I know nothing of private schools, they sound like a risky place to send children in the past, away from any real oversight. The number of people with awful experiences is quite high.
However the nanny story made me snort. If you think kids having their heads banged together is anything other than utterly normal until about the late 80s, that is privilege.
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I have always thought he was a person who had the benefit of more airtime than he deserved and her death gave him a cause when it should have given him reason to disappear back into the shadows. And that may still be the case but I dont think one can legitimately take issue with a person’s expression of their pain and its causes. He clearly has many issues to deal with.
Sorry, this has all hit a nerve. Yesterday I was passing the very place where it all happened for me back in the 70s. So I went in. I walked round the school and it threw a lot of stuff in the air for me. First time since leaving in 1981.
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Anyone who wants a better sense of all this, away from the distraction of royalty and Diana etc, follow the Nicky Campbell Edinburgh Academy story.
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I definitely think it's related to guilt over Diana.
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Well said Muttley
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Prodders, did this person face court hearing in Wiltshire and have a hyphenated name and do his evil work in three schools including one in Berkshire?
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Sails, forgive the impertinence, and I appreciate that this comment is based on posts only and I do not know you one bit*, but I read your approach to engagement, pain, needs etc as being very intentionally independent and unaccountable, almost resentful of encroachment, suspiciously assertive of everything being alright Jack, to a point where I suspect that this is an impregnable fortress inside which dwells someone with no fewer foibles and scars than the rest of us.
*so, on balance, it is a worthless observation, other than to say I see you and life is tricky
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Imagine the hair in those days.
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i don't have to imagine it
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saillaw, you must appreciate that other people have different experiences to you.
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What I can’t understand is folks who have been abused in boarding schools still send their own kids there…
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saillaw, you must appreciate that other people have different experiences to you.
Hmm. That’s absolutely not a given.
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oh I know, muttley. I was trying to be polite.
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“saillaw, you must appreciate that other people have different experiences to you. ”
Do you even rof?
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A lot of the reactions to this seem insane. Is it the "I was molested/abandoned/beaten and it never did me any harm no it didn't it didn't IT DIDN'T" phenomenon?
It matters because it matters - whether the child victim was rich or poor or nice or annoying as an adult but also and most importantly sorry to be selfish because the people who now control our world were apparently at risk of being sodomised as infants and it has made them insane and and we need to recognise that and try to find a way to stop it from bringing our world down further.
It's not just one random posho's tale. As he said, Boris was at Eton at the same time.
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Not the same guy Mutters.
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Mutts a few foibles but no scars. Really just a scenario where there's nothing really left in life the feels scary or challenging so I just happily potter along unfazed by most of it. If anything I get the odd craving to go and do something extraordinary just to feel a little bit of fear again.
Kimmy the vast majority of my friends were privately educated around ten years after Spencer. None of them came across teachers who would cut down garden canes to draw blood for their own sexual arousal and indeed most private schools by then had already voluntarily banned corporal punishment. That seems to be a huge change of mindset in a relatively short space of time. Just chance that all the sadists happened to retire in the late 1970's just before me and my friends went to school?
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