I was abused at school. Here’s what I’ve learnt.

I was abused in school in the 1980s and 1990s. Eleven staff/clergy have since been imprisoned, and many more should have been.

So it’s a big case study from which I’ve personally learned the following about abusive cultures and survivor experiences:

1. The abuse I experienced is called ‘second wave’ because there was an earlier ‘first wave’ in the 1970s. Why a second wave? Because, despite teachers from the 1970s being moved on when they were caught, the culture wasn’t significantly changed. Furthermore, some of my abusers were victims of abusers themselves. It wasn’t just bad apples, but a rotten tree that needed fixing.

2. Survivors are not a monolith: I’ve heard survivors speak kindly of teachers who were abusive to me. These survivors are not lying, their experience was just different to mine. They were abused by different people, and in one case, one of their abusers was very kind to me (in fact, when I saw in the news he had been convicted of sexual abuse, I found it hard to believe). But that of course is the MO of abusers, using kindness to groom individuals and whole communities. This results in survivors having different stories that might at first glance appear to contradict each other.

3.There are various reasons for why abusers are kind to some but cruel to others: sometimes the kindness is grooming to win you over as a supporter in case the abuser is ever found out; other times, it’s grooming for direct abuse (even if it’s never actualised). So for every person who was abused, there are many more whose experience of the abuser was ‘nothing but kindness.’

4. I’ve also heard survivors speak well of teachers who were either abusive or complicit in my abuse, saying, they were ‘one of the good ones’, or even ‘standing up to the culture’. It’s painful for me to read these, in fact it was in reading one account that provoked me to write this piece.

My tentative conclusion from this point is that: a) my abusers didn’t like some of the other abusers, and so spoke up against them, and b) some of those who had been complicit felt guilty, and later spoke up to help others, and c) some deflected attention from themselves (either their abuse or complicity) by pointing the finger at others.

5. Some survivors say they benefitted from other aspects of the school, and they think it should stay open. Others think it should have an independent review and a serious culture change, including staff changes, or it should close. Part of this is down to different personalities having experienced different severities of abuse. But another part is down to the types of support/ counselling/education on abuse that people have had. People are at different places. Some have had a lot of counselling, others none. Some might still have a great affinity for their abusers and those who were complicit. Others have worked through that. Some are still vulnerable to abusers; others are in a more protected position.

6. Then there are my classmates who thankfully weren’t abused. Some of them get the pain of the abused, others minimise it and might even quote the narrative (back then) that it was ‘character building’. This latter group make it hard for survivors to put their head above the parapet and challenge the narrative with which many were brainwashed.

7. So, because of all these different (apparently contradictory) voices from my school, I find it doubly hard as a survivor to tell my story. It’s hard in the first place to speak of the unspeakable. But it’s doubly hard when you know someone else might say, ‘Actually, that teacher was always good to me.’

In conclusion, in any abuse case I try not to pit survivors’ stories against each other, or use bystanders’ stories to dilute survivors’ stories. Instead, I seek to harmonise them, integrate them, so that I can better understand the system in which they have occurred. From such a harmonisation, we can see patterns and people’s consistencies or inconsistencies, and we have a better picture of where the whole system needs reform. And, all the while, without telling a survivor that their experience they’ve tried so hard to voice isn’t true.