Events in Edinburgh this week highlighted by Nicky Campbell, bring my mind back to historic abuse at my old school Warwick. The bastard who physically abused me, Geoffrey Eve, got a one way ticket to hell last year. But my long and, ultimately successful, campaign to get Warwick to name Eve and apologise lead to my involvement in exposing Warwick’s paedophile teachers. I have already named one, the music master Charles Watmough.
He is alive and kicking in Scarborough and despite the Warwickshire fuzz having five victims come forward it seems that nothing is happening. I may have to pay him another visit after Easter when I head north on family business.
Before we come to the other perverts, I found myself on the school website. When I attended, Warwick was the sort of place where sportsmen were lauded, scholars largely ignored and the creative types often despised. How times have changed. I now see that the prefects rather than bragging about their antics on the rugger field or discussing which lass from King’s High they wanted to shag, sit on committees which are as follows in an order selected by Warwick:
Anti-Racism
Anti-Bullying
Mental Health
Gender Equality
Diversity – LGBTQ+ and Disability
Green Team
Catering
Charities
Teaching & Learning
Sixth Form
Call me an old reactionary but I’d have thought that at a school, the penultimate committee should be top of the list but I guess my view is all rather last century.
Anyhow, Warwick has clearly changed a bit and for the better.
Back to the paedophiles of the 70s, 80s and 90s. Two who I plan to name on the basis of testimony from a number of OWs are dead. There is another dead man about whom I dither as I have just one witness to his behaviour. But there is one paedophile who is very much alive. Almost everybody who went to Warwick in that era is aware of him and six victims have given sworn statements to Warwickshire Police. I also gave evidence about the man although as an observer of his general behaviour not a victim. One of the victims killed himself in early 2022 but there are still five men, five victims, prepared to go into the witness box.
I would bet the ranch that had Warwick ever come totally clean in acknowledging that there was a very real problem with paedophile teachers in the past there would be more men, now in their forties, fifties, sixties and seventies coming forward. This man, I am sure, had many other victims.
The CPS has the file and I was told that in October it had all the information it had requested and thus it is just sitting there. For reasons that I cannot explain until I name the man, there is no way on earth that he can deny that he is a paedophile, he could merely try to deny the Warwick allegations.
Thus, as soon as the CPS finally makes a decision, one way or another, I shall name this teacher who appears to have been the worst of the Warwick paedophiles and also how Warwick deliberately made it so easy for him to abuse its pupils. The story of how Warwick enabled him is horrific. Until the CPS decides I am urged by the Warwickshire Police not to name him lest it prejudices the CPS decision. I shall abide by that request.
But at some point the “cuffs” are off and I shall write and I hope that at that juncture those prefects on the various committees will join me in urging Warwick to explicitly come clean about this man and about Eve, naming both men, to all past pupils via mailshots and with adverts in the regional press and urging other victims to come forward. I very much fear that the victims of Watmough, of CPS man and of others who I know about are very much the tip of the iceberg.