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lots of love and strength to all of the abuse survivors

Well done this man for outing the abuse, very very brave. It is so widespread we have all got to stop the abusers.lots of love for Charles Spencer and anyone who's been abused.

Thank you both, so illuminating

I do find it odd that someone who hasnt been to boarding school.. having an opinion. All valid points, of course and training makes people qualified and im being a hypocrite but from having been to boarding school. Im struggling to see how she knows what its actually like..i value the opinion but struggling with the emotionl aspect. Xx

I absolutely love the " it doesnt matter why im alcoholic.. it matters that i don't drink today.

Thank you for highlighting this very important subject. This is my dads poem about his experiences at boarding school: Outrage He came like a fox in the dead of night, That man of God, ambassador of light, Tearing me from the fluttering fantasy Of childhood slumber with his foul, fumbling Fingers and his fetid breath; the torch beam Razing sleep’s sanctuary beyond repair, My defences mere castles in the air. Pinioned and paralysed with shock and fear, Overwhelmed by the weight of God’s great book, Complicit by just being there, I let Him take my soul away without restraint Or retribution, without a single word Of protestation, a pathetic pawn In his game of abject violation. For when he had told the twisted tale Of the Millar and the mill wheel grinding, He simply cracked the egg of innocence and left My coop of broken dreams and desecration. By Robert Esau www.progressiveeducation.org/outrage-memories-of-boarding-school/

With the little girl singing on koyal bird, that time indian saw putting birds in cage because of their singing, Ram denied promotion on 75 candidates (yrs) only 3 (western) country...

I was once in a tribute band to FREE and the singer&drummer were both public school and both told of running away.... and i remember another drummer from years ago, i worked with, ran away, i think from Highgate public school.... they said no more

My hyper vigilance is listening for the undertones of what is being said, listening and reacting to any or all criticisms, or perceived criticism, how people are behaving, how close or far apart they are, where the alliances are in room, matching the general vibe or energy of a situation- it is an all pervasive hyper vigilance. How else does a kid who is shut down, surrounded by kids who are shut down, make any sense of what is happening around them without any adult support? A well honed skill for a therapist to have Piers! Thank you so much for telling us your story and putting it into this larger context. Dread, fear and terror are at that most intense moment of abandonment, when the parents walked off or drove away, and in our beds at night wondering, waiting, not knowing what to expect or what will happen next. That is all caught up in the cells of our bodies, locked up in the freeze, and in the intensity of the fight when we let that overcome us. Keep breathing, keep healing everyone! ❤

I think that one of the most useful things they could teach young people at schools is fear management. It is all right to feel fear. It does not mean you are a wimp. But it needs to be managed and released cathartically - in that way it is like anger. If it is not managed effectively then either it will turn into aggression - either things like name calling or really snarky and innuendo ridden language or spreading rumors (I think many people are in denial of what a powerful and poisonous form of bullying this is) or it could even result in violence - perhaps sexual violence. Rape I think is more often a highly pathetic macho dominance act of a deeply frightened man or boy than it is about lust. Or else I think the fear gets internalised in the form of depression and truama. One of the conclusions of the fear ridden child or adult is that if they are not experiencing fear and anxiety then there really must be something very big to fear indeed (Hence the Mr Man character Mr Worry who is told to make a list of what worries him by a magician and to do something about each one. In the end the list is all crossed off but Mr Worry is worried that he has nothing to be worried about) I think if young people at school could be taught to name their fears to themselves then that in itself would go a long way towards stopping the highly destructive aggression and depression and truama that can result from fear. For instanced someone could say to themselves "I am noticing that I am having feelings of fear about child X because his skin is a different colour from mine and I think he does better in class than me without having to try as hard as I do" Christening a fear with a name is a tremendously powerful thing to do. The first step to exorcising a psychological demon is to name it. But we need to be honest that we feel the fear in the first place.

You're a God-send, mate. Your compassion and love are palpable. It's incredible to see someone overcome the mistrust and betrayal of early life in order to thrive, and to lead others away from darkness.

Really relatable Piers. I'm still working out the links between my five years at boarding school and my mental health, and I can always rely on your videos to highlight some connections.

ХВАЛА...🥰

Thank you Piers, I'll add that tool of looking left and right to my kit for when I'm scared 🙏 . I've also found the technique of fully feeling the fear bubble helpful - I'll focus in on the most painful sensation of it wherever I find it in my body - usually my guts - let it go as big as it needs, and then like a bubble it just bursts and goes. The trick for me is catching it and being brave enough to feel it each time 😅 Its a self compassion process. Best wishes

Only just started to look into this and oh boy the tears are flowing right now. I went to boarding school at 12/13 until 17. Always felt something was "wrong". I had time in hospital with physiological illness and have suffered depression. Now diagnosed with fibromyalgia but I think it all stems from school days.

Explains partly why some people become psychopaths, like Blair for example

I applaud Charles Spencer for his truthfulness and writing this book,I come from the total opposite background,and there’s plenty of abuse there as well, but I agree with him that to send a 7 year old child away is not good , I find it horrendous, I only hope people will read this and reconsider.

9:55 - Why on earth are you implying that Jimmy Savile has been proven guilty?

Really helpful interview, many thanks. I went to boarding school aged 8 and, now 39, have spent the last 15 years trying to heal the emotional trauma and find a place of inner calm. Pleasing to hear Charles and Piers speak so eloquently about it.

Hearing this wonderful guy speak something occurs to me which is - what have been the effects that so many doctors (including psychiatrists of course) have been to boarding school - bearing in mind that boarding school very often heavily encourages people to bury their emotional intelligence and empathetic listening skills in order to survive. I just wonder how different psychiatry would be as a profession if none of the psychiatrists had been to boarding school and if all along half of psychiatrists had been women - as well as there being a healthy representation of people of colour. Medicine is crucial for psychiatry and I firmly believe as a lay person that sometimes psychiatric medication is absolutely essential (though never the whole answer). However listening is also vital and for doctors to be given enough time so they can listen. Although psychiatrists are not therapists or counsellors (those being other highly important professions) at the same time it is vital for psychiatrists to have advanced counselling skills if they are really going to help patients. How many really have them? I was once suffering from suicidal depression and was told by a psychiatric locum (my regular doctor was on holiday) that "other people have problems too" . This happened in the Priory hospital which is meant to be one of the best psychiatric places in England. It was disgusting that this happened to me and I don't believe the doctor in question even read my notes. Can you ever imagine a cancer patient being told this? I was at the time too young and passive and catatonically depressed to blow the whistle. If anyone else has this sort of experience please please do not ever put up with it. We deserve better.

Thank you Brother and all you do❤️

NHS let my mother committe suicide in mental health ward. She was blackmailed by her doctor to go on as volunteer or be sectioned. One week later they let her out for the weekend and she went back in with drugs and killed herself. I got a phone call Sunday morning 8 am saying your mother is dead. No sorry in 50 years. I have been to the coroner, police and the hospital and none wanted to know I have a major authority problem to the point i will get my own back before i die.

It seems another area of cover up has been our chronic mismanagement of our relationship with Europe since 1945 culminating in the colossal mistake of Brexit. People in certain circumstances just do not talk about it in the same way as in certain households an alcoholic Uncle who commits suicide just isn't talked about. The extent of cover up and denial about Brexit gets to the stage where people start talking about the problem being that it was the wrong sort of Brexit and that if they were in charge it would have been done properly. At the heart also is a colossal denial of our decline from being a great power and the need to be part of a team to have strength and also have more freedom to make decisions that would be out of our grasp if we were a small fish alone. There is also in some quarters I think sheer jingoism about forming an alliance with "a load of johnny foreigners". There are of course significant disadvantages to being part of the European union - it is just that the disadvantages of not being part of it - as we are both discovering and denying are considerably greater.

That mother who told her son she'd have taken him out if he wrote one more time- who's to say she would have when it came down to it? It could have been another way to shift blame by implying her son had some responsibility by not begging again. It was a very sick societal set up, and thank you both so much for helping us all heal ❤

That's an interesting comment at 11.04 about compartmentalised thinking. Are you quoting Nick Duffell there? It makes me think of classical liberalism and neo-classical economics, very Anglo-Saxon creations. Neo-classical economics, which totally dominates the economics profession defines a society as an aggregation of constrained utility optimising agents. It then goes on and algebraically "shows" how individuals and society rationally obtain optimal solutions.This kind of economics undepins an ideology that has had a devastating effect on many societies. It totally disregards things like human psychology or institutional and other differences between societies. I think you mentioned once an author that mentioned the link between the British Empire and American (corporate etc) thinking, can you remember who that may be?

Lord Spencer, Thank you so much for your bravery in sharing your story !

Wow, you are such a beautiful person, reflected by your relationship with such a beautiful view behind you. Thank you for this channel - I've been drawn to your videos, not understanding fully why as I never went to boarding school, until I saw how the different symptoms seem to mirror my mother's way of coping. She went to boarding school on a scholarship in Ireland in the late 1950's and always sang its praises to the rooftops - how privileged she was etc etc, but her modus operandi would tend to harshness/coldness, being dismissive and mocking of vulnerability and gentleness. The rare time she would be upset it would feel catastrophic for her. Constant, constant busyness her whole life; 'the devil makes work of idle hands'.. She has a hard time having empathy, and she was favoured by the nuns, I'm not sure why. She got to ring the morning bell at school, and she seemed really proud about that. Several years ago her fellow boarding school friend bawled crying in front of us both about how unhappy she was there, and when I brought this up to my mother recently, she said she had no idea her friend was ever unhappy there. ? ! She has this selective amnesia also about other situations, and she'll also say that sometimes there are traumas just too big to ever be faced, you've just got to keep going... We are all a maelstrom of experiences of course; its a fascinating, complex survival mode for the individual psyche, but this boarding school syndrome 'rings lots of bells' from my experience with my mum. Blessings and so much motherly love - I'm smiling because even though I'm probably about the same age as you, you bring out this nurturing mothering instinct :-D p.s. Both of my brothers were day-boys at a local boarding school and experienced/witnessed much of what you describe - they were nothing if they didn't play rugby, physical violence at first until my father went up to the school and protested, a suicide of a boarder while they were there also. There were children there whose parents were in Mexico - just flew their kids over and left them there. May this whole thing be outlawed someday as I'm sure it will. Blessings!

Have any of the abusers been prosecuted?

Thank you for this talk. I went to boarding school age 12 and ended up on the front line in remote destinations seeing terrible things. You've made things make more sense, thanks again.

Heavy and deep! Neglect is definitely at the Center of the boarding experience. And it wasn’t benign.

Very informative episode Piers, Dino and Alex. All 3 men are tireless servants of the desire for a better world for survivors of all kinds of abuse and neglect. I’ll be writing to my MP and adding my support to voices unbound. In my view children are treated as 2nd class citizens in many countries, including the U.K. They are not given the airtime or support they need or deserve. Much of which is driven be ridiculous Victorian notions and boarding school culture that we’ve colonially exported all over the world. Sort it out government and policy makers, and finally do the right thing for goodness sake!

Public schools are run by complicity…….it forms a cohesive system that helps them run better.

Dino asks a very good question about why Rwanda gets so much attention and the government has already spent £500 Million on it. I think at least part of the answer is that the Tory government wants to divert people away from their failure with domestic policies like dealing with poverty and making this country a genuinely more even society. They do this by "talking tough" and "acting tough" about immigration. This really excites some people and gets them going. If the government "talks tough" then that can make them feel a little more "tough" and together themselves. There is a seduction to this. It develops a false morality through righteous hatred of some stereotypical "bad person" whether that is a scrounging and abusive immigrant or someone fiddling the benefits system and being lazy and pretending to be mentally ill so they don't have to go to work. All these dreadful stereotypes are actually crass and trashy (how often does the government go on about rich Tory supporters dodging paying taxes?) but they can serve as a diversionary tactic. With mandatory reporting of sexual abuse we have a far bigger and far more evil issue upon which the government has really done an "Uncle Fudgie". Goodbye Uncle Fudgie is a very good one man show about boarding school. Check it out on U tube.

I appreciate that boarding school abuse is only a small slice of the scope of this problem. I do not wish to belittle how much horrific abuse there is in some state schools, and in some churches and in some youth groups. And so the list goes on. Because I was sexually abused at boarding school that is what I feel qualified to comment on. There is a saying apparently among old Etonians "Have you been to school?" It is a very telling phrase in what it says about Eton and the kind of attitudes that are bred there. Basically it implies that if you haven't been to Eton you have not really been to school. Or you haven't been to a school that is worthy of the name. I think there is a huge relationship between this type of elitist attitude and sexual and other abuse at public school. I say this as someone who comes from a rich upper middle class family who was sent to boarding school myself and was sexually interfered with. This elitism says basically - one rule for them with their PC Plods and their little social workers and their need to behave. Another rule for us who are living beyond that silly plebian rubbish. None of these silly little people have anything to do with us. We make our own rules.I am not saying that all ex Etonians have this attitude or that it is shared by all former boarders. The situation is much more complex and interesting than that. However as long as this elitism remains a strong established view among a significant number of people then abuse is always going to covered up by elitist institutions. It is basically a form of moral sickness that it exists in our society. And as long as it exists we are not going to get mandatory reporting because those in charge will stick up for their elitist organisations. Asking a conservative government to vote yes for mandatory reporting of abuse is like asking a load of pigs to vote for pork pies. We have a long tough road ahead but we need to combat elitism (one set of rules for us and for you dear pleb another) before we can insure a victory on one of the effects of elitism (boarding schools covering up sexual abuse and the dumbing down of mandatory reporting)

I am deeply disgusted as someone who was sexually abused at boarding school that it still not is a criminal offence to shield someone from arrest if they committed an abusive sexual act. In a way though it does not surprise me. Many of the MP's come from boarding schools and they might think those places are too superior to have to deal with the law and social service enquiries about abuse. That is for "lesser" institutions like comprehensive schools. I myself was sexually abused by other boys both older than me and my own age and I think in that case as well as the police an independent team of abuse experts from social services need to come in - not only to safeguard the victim of the abuse but also to do some enquiries about the household situation of the boys or girls who conducted the abuse. Punishing people is not enough. There needs to be education about how to treat fellow human beings and also some very tough love. People talk about rip off Britain or broken Britain. I begin to wonder whether the real term is cover up Britain. And how when we cover things up although in the short term some of us may save ourself a bit of embarrassment in the long term we are responsible for shit (there is no polite term for it) getting worse and getting far more foul and dangerous. I will be writing to my MP about this but what we really need - as well as your excellent input Piers - is social workers and judges and police officers standing up and saying this really makes no sense at all. It is a mockery of justice.

I blame the Left Wing education system for children who were sent to special needs boarding schools. The Leftists are also sympathetic towards people who abuse children.

Don’t always blame wealthy people sending their children to residential schools. There is a lot of children sent to special needs boarding schools or kids homes. Anyone remember the notorious kids home in North Wales. Cumbria had more than its fair share of boarding schools-the list is as follows: Underley Hall, Witherslack Hall, Greystone House, Eden Grove, Broughton Towers, Stonecross School. I think there was one called Riverside? The list goes on. In Warrington there was Massey Hall School which I believe is under investigation. Half of the schools in Cumbria opened in the mid 1970s under Labour Government. The Labour run Lancashire County Council sent children to these schools paid by the state. Social Services are the usual culprits in sending children to these institutions. There are rumours that Cyril Smith may have had links with Underley Hall school in South Cumbria. I think it’s fair to say that all the authorities that pay to send children to special needs residential schools are Labour run whether it’s Lancashire, Calderdale, Wirral or Rochdale councils.

I remember I was in primary school where we were learning spellings and we were saying the word station letter by letter. The teacher worked out that me and my best friend were not saying the letters in the proper order. So she got everyone else to be silent and got us to stand on our chairs. And everyone chanted how to say station at us in gleeful union. We both failed to say it properly again. So the teacher got us to stand on our desks in front of everyone. Off everyone went again saying "station" at us. This time my friend got it right so he was allowed to get down from the desk onto his chair and then onto the floor. I did not get it right. I was getting it more and more wrong. All the class gleefully chanted station at me again. By this time I had completely clammed up. I was in tears. I would not have been able to spell out my own name I was so upset and deeply ashamed with myself. At this point the teacher gave up on me saying perhaps it was quite a hard word. This was in the mid 1970's but it should never ever have happened. I think it was quite a traumatizing experience as well as hideously humiliating and I was already traumatized because my parents had to prioretise looking after a very very unwell sister who could have died and I was left alone or with hostile adults who were supposed to be caring for me. This incident in the classroom, cocktailing with what I had already experienced really really knocked my self confidence and made the other boys relate to me as a fearful and upset boy thus reinforcing things. It helped me be in a fearful miserable psychological state when I was sent to boarding school and the real heavy duty abuse stated. Fortunately there are some really really good primary school teachers who, although quite rightly would not accept any nonsense in their classroom, would never ever ever let something like that happen under their watch.

To me, after having spent many years in a so called mental health community I think there are some very serious questions that need to be asked about how trauma informed the staff are at group homes for people with enduring mental ill health and/or learning disabilities and/or are heavily autistic. When I was at a so called community in the mid 1990's most of the staff were not really trained at all. And there was a misunderstanding among some of them that just because they had an academic qualification (a degree) in psychology this did not give them the right to role play as therapists. In the place I was in there was a resident who clearly had been very badly abused (including I think sexually abused) as a boy and adolescent. As a result he did not understand at all about healthy relationships. The only relationships he understood about were in terms of heavily insulting people and manipulating people into feeling rotten about themselves and also in being a sexual preditor with young men. I think here he was abused as a youth and now he was reversing the roles. He was then put in with people who among very many other qualities were vulnerable adults. Although the head of the hostel was very keen for us to call it a community and to remember we were part of a community it was not a community. It was a time bomb. This resident was both traumatised and traumatising and also refused to seek the help of any therapist or counsellor. He just had his weekly round of pills. The staff did nothing about it due both to cluelessness and also neglect. The head of the hostel said "Well he has to live somewhere" There were other times when members of staff caused trauma themselves. One of them was determined to improve my social life and made me ring someone up and invite them out in his presence. When I said making phone calls frightened me and I needed to work up to that stage more gradually he simply did not listen. He basically ordered me to do it. He also would set me therapeutic homework over artificeal social outings he had forced me to organise as though he was a trained psychologist. Staff would also argue and fall out and we would, like a bunch of children, just be told that someone whom we had formed strong bonds with, is leaving now. Say goodbye. We did not sit down and discuss what had gone wrong as any real "community" would do. I am saying all this because I think that lack of trauma informedness is very very common among mental health group homes and other group homes. Because they can be so amateur and shambolically organized with the most dedicated members of staff using them as a launch pad to become social workers of counsellors or mental health managers I think many are designed by default to keep mental illness ticking over rather than helping people recover or at the least use the place as a stage to living more independently.

Interesting thoughts, thanks for posting. First, and this is just a clarification, I think you were referring to Erving Goffman whose books I have found very useful. Second, and this is more of a ramble, you use the word suppression several times and as far as I can see and thinking of my own boarding school experience, repression would seem a more accurate word. The difference in the two is vast - I can suppress my anger in a situation and it will return when it is safe to reveal but if constantly suppressed over a period of time I might lose the ability of experiencing it directly. Goffman suggests that we learn acceptable pretenses or presentations to cover this inability and I suggest that what we learn in our relationships with other boarders, especially those of the same age, is how to make this process of repression seamless. Checking each others armour is how I see it. Like bullying, this armour checking is also an indirect vent for anger. Lastly, I think it may be unhelpful to focus too much on the boarding experience. I do not want to underplay its significance but, for example, it can become a tool for victimhood, either ours or that of partners.

Leadership isn't easy, but it is simple - you need to care about your people. I enjoyed watching this, and recognised so much from my 30 years in the military. Too many leaders I met focused on management instead of leadership, which is what Zena was describing when she talked about organisational change; and way too many senior officers were more focused on their ego and advancement prospects than on leading their organisations. I also think you can learn more from seeing leadership done badly than from seeing it done well. That's because good leadership doesn't create the friction that bad leadership does, and it's friction that frustrates people. Keep up the great work Piers.

This describes my friend's husband to.a T. He was just like that. She thought it was normal of men.

A very powerful and positive talk and my huge respect to both people involved. To me there are some resources worth talking about when it comes to leadership and eldership. Frank Herbert wrote his science fiction novel Dune partly as a warning against hero worship and the cult of the unchallenged leader. This was through the figure of Paul Arditraides. He made the point that hero's can turn into demagogues very quickly and thus become deeply deeply tragic figures as they unleash forces beyond their control. As many know two very excellent films have been made of Dune that are well worth seeing. The books Dune Messiah, Children of Dune and God Emperor of Dune are I feel worth reading and researching too for their warnings about what can happen to leaders. The other book I feel is worth consulting is by Dr David Owen who was a psychiatrist before he was a politician. He has written a book "Ill and in power" about so many of our leaders being mentally ill and the effect this can have on countries and indeed the whole world. He is very good about what happened to Margaret Thatcher after her victory in the 1987 election and what happened to Tony Blair with his decision to join in with George Bush in the 2003 Iraq war. The relationship between leaders and mental ill health is not completely clear cut though. For instance Churchill - though he made some terrible decisions prior to 1939 was someone who kept Britain going against Hitler during the second world war even though he had his terrible "Black Dog" of depression. Actually I think from Churchills point of view the war may in a very dark way have been therapeutic. This is because Hitler became the black dog - but an external one. And he could fight this external black dog in a way that was more clear cut and ultimately successful than fighting his own internal demons.

What a very beautiful and wonderfully vocal (with birdsong) garden you are in Piers. It heals me to see the countryside as I am currently in London in a flat on a busy road. Thank you also for your really wise and generous words. As quite a nerdy sort of person I have found it really really helpful to research (through legal channels and websites on the internet as well as books) the abuse that happened to me at boarding school. And to realise that fundamentally similar things happened to so many others. At first this shocked me but I have now found that it has had a very good grounding - even normalising effect. It is as though the abuse I have faced is a monster and now the monster is most of the time on a leash. It is not hiding in the shadows waiting to pounce out at me. I would also say in terms of boarding school that people who behave abusively vary quite a bit in terms of personality and of course being a bully is not their only identity. It is important not only to process and come to an emotional understanding of the more simplistic bullying that was more purely simply abuse. Some people can also at times be very friendly and warm and then suddenly turn on you again. It is important to come to an understanding of these people and how confused they can make you feel without seeing them as cardboard cut out bogeymen and bogeywomen who are only fit for hell. It is important to realise how complex cycles of abuse can be and how they are frequently mixed with other forms of behaviour. It is very often more constructive I feel to talk about behaviour and how it effects the self than about "bullies" and "bastards" and "bitches" though it took me time to get to that stage and I still sometimes slip up.

It makes perfect sense that you would shut down emotions to survive in such a hostile environment. I empathise deeply and appreciate you sharing your experience.

Did you go to boarding school?

I read Sad Little Men by Richard Beard but he glossed over what it was like for girls in boarding schools. You described it perfectly what it was like for them in your coeducational boarding school.

Several years ago, the BBC was pushing the idea of sending children away in their early teens to be apprentices rather than be apprenticed to their parents or someone living nearby as normal in history. There were fewer people within commuting distance then. This goes against tribal culture. Right wing Governments would want all children in state run boarding scholls from the age of 11.

I am not for abolishing private schools but for removing their charitable status. Then banning boarding. There should be more support for families so children dont grow up in violent homes.

I know that accommodation for the girls is less spartan, but also girls require less spartan surroundings. I didn't realise they were treated differently from the boys in coeducational schools as well as the single sex schools.