It was last year that I contacted the celebrated campaigner on the matter of historic sexual abuse at Britain’s public schools, Alex Renton, to discuss how to push my old school to be more proactive in addressing its own scandals. My abuse at the hands of sadistic Geoffrey Eve was physical. But other boys suffered sexual abuse. One victim, having suppressed his memories for decades has finally decided to confront them, contacted Renton who put him in touch with me. We spoke last week.
As he recounted his story it seemed terribly familiar as I have spoken to another victim of the same abuser who, for reasons I shall explain at a later date, I cannot, for now, name. But suffice to say this man abused at least half a dozen boys at Warwick who have all now gone to the old bill. This latest victim will do the same.
The abuser is not the music teacher Charles Watmough who I named and where five victims have now gone to the Police who appear unwilling to do anything. This abuser, one of at least six abusers employed by Warwick, was, I believe, far more prolific.
I now know of at least fifteen cases of sexual abuse at Warwick by various teachers. But the idea that a gaggle of paedophiles abused so few boys during many years employed by Warwick is fanciful. It is because Warwick has, until recently, actively denied that it had a problem, that boys who were abused feel they were unique and so have been unwilling to step forward.
When the most active abuser is named by either myself or Warwick, and it is a when not an if, I suspect that the floodgates will open and, at last, we will start to see the true scale of the problem at Warwick with abuse and also with how the abusers were protected by the school when concerns were raised by parents.
Any thoughts I have of retiring from journalism are pushed back by calls like the one I had last week. I first started campaigning on the matter of historic abuse at Warwick a dozen years ago. Eve, now dead, was banned from attending events at the school as a result of my efforts and we victims of the old monster finally got an apology from the school. But it has yet to make a public admission of its failings on Eve. That will come. And I am not quitting to become a goat farmer until Warwick comes clean on the matter of sexual abuse, until those responsible are named and everything is brought out into the open.