An acquaintance of mine, now in his seventies, used to be a senior member of staff at a Scottish private school where there have been several alleged historic cases of abuse. Of course it’s been harrowing for the victims, but the investigation has taken its toll on this teacher that I know as well.
The problem is that police investigations work from the assumption that “everyone else at the school must have known what was going on and covered it up.” Effectively, other staff are guilty until they can prove their innocence; even if that’s not so, it’s how the staff are made to feel by the process. I’d suggest that pressure has broken this teacher – at least for the moment – even although he was simply there, and it’s now accepted that he wasn’t complicit at all. Hopefully, his life will come together again soon. In the meantime, he’s just another victim of the evil monster.
But I also wonder if the general public doesn’t assume schools were able to do more than they did. Paedophiles are notoriously manipulative of their victims. They convince them either that what’s taken place has been consensual, or if it hasn’t, then it’s the victim’s fault for not saying so. By the time the the abused – male or female – understands what’s happened, they feel too guilty to report their abuser.
Without a direct complaint, the school is left with nothing but whispers and rumours. The school might be “sure”, but not sure enough to stand up in a court of law with any sort of evidence. Nothing happens until one victim breaks cover – perhaps many years later – and then others follow, emboldened to share their ‘shameful childhoods’, too. The entire house of cards collapses spectacularly. But a victim needs to come forward at some point.
I suspect that every secondary school has skeletons. When I was a teacher, I heard many rumours that a colleague had been having inappropriate relationships with girls from his classes – just whispers around the staff room, nothing more, and all from before my time at that school so that I didn’t personally know any of the alleged victims. What could anyone do? Unless you can prove what you’re saying, there are defamation laws that protect individuals from false allegations.
Until… many years later, I was playing an open golf competition, and afterwards the wife of one of playing partners joined us in the clubhouse bar for a drink. During the conversation, it emerged that, not only had she attended the same school that I’d taught at, she’d been the best friend of one of the most abused girls, the teacher had “tried it on” with her as well. (She was too disgusted by the thought.) I pointed out that, even although more than 30 years had passed, this woman could still report him.
“No,” she said, “it’s just not worth all the hassle.”
And that’s the point, isn’t it? Only in exceptional cases are vicitms who have lived through an ordeal going to put themselves through the same ordeal again. Their word is going to be questioned, their evidence is going to have to be (quite correctly, by the way) tested. So in almost every case, the evil villain goes unpunished.
Perhaps not in this case, but that’s a story for another day.
Tales from the Heart of the City 