The 9th Earl Spencer, uncle to Prince William and Prince Harry, has written a new memoir, ‘A Very Private School’
Charles Spencer, the younger brother of Princess Diana, was 42 years old when he first disclosed that he had been sexually abused as a child.
The revelation came during a therapy session when Spencer reached a low point in his life. Now 59 years old, the 9th Earl Spencer is revisiting the alleged trauma he experienced in his youth in his new memoir titled “A Very Private School.”
“I was undergoing a 10-day course of intensive introspection and therapy,” Charles Spencer shared with Fox News Digital. “During one session, my therapist instructed each of us to whisper to him a secret we had never shared with anyone before. That’s when I whispered to him that I had been sexually abused as a child by an adult. I vividly recall the shock on his face, even though he had likely heard many revelations before. Following the session, he pulled me aside and emphasized the seriousness of what I had disclosed.”
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“By that stage, I had children,” the father of seven shared. “I suddenly put it into context. What if one of my children of either gender had been subjected to this as an 11-year-old? It made my blood boil. I then started to allow myself to feel the full devastation of what had happened to me.”
At age 8, Spencer was enrolled at Maidwell Hall, an elite English boarding school. The historian said meeting with other former pupils compelled him to revisit painful memories of the past.
“When I heard their stories, I was shocked,” he recalls. “I met a [former student] after not seeing him for 40 years. I knew from his wife that he never talked about his time at school because it was so painful. He told me how he felt. Every day was useless, to save him as a 9-year-old. How the intended person was severely sexually assaulted three times.
“I took 10 pages of notes, stopped, and said, ‘This is terrible – I can’t tell this story’. He reached across, grabbed my hand, and said, ‘Someone has to do this – it has to be you.’ It convinced me that the truth needed to be shared with the world.”
Spencer said he found family records of fellow Spencers attending boarding school dating back 300 years.
“It’s essential to send your kids to places where they can meet the right people,” Spencer explains. “These remarkable children meet at a price and form lifelong bonds. You are alienated from your family and you are subjected to very cruel behavior.
“But it was, and still is, a trade-off among the upper classes in England. You don’t have to bother with child-rearing and you can go on with your pampered lives. At the same time, the child comes out with huge social benefits and a network of friends that will support those social benefits for a lifetime.”
Spencer noted that it didn’t take long to witness and experience the alleged incidents of abuse behind closed doors.
“It was a brutal experience,” he noted. “The headmaster is a brutal pedophile. He employs a very small number of teachers in this place who are either … perverts or never tell stories against him. There’s no one to go there.
“My parents had no idea of the level of cruelty and perversion. They would never have sent me there. I think they had an old-fashioned view that corporal punishment and beatings were probably part of the school, but they were a daily ritual. There were 72 boys. And every day at least half a dozen would beat us. Your time has come too soon. I think parents have no sense of that.”
Spencer noted that one student struggled to remove his underwear at night because dried blood and clothing stuck to his skin. The boy had to sit in a warm bath until the fabric loosened. It took two weeks for the wounds to heal.
In his book, Spencer alleges that after tea time, dozens of boys would disappear into a private wing, where they would be beaten overnight. There is no hope that pajama pants will provide any protection. Spencer said the pain he felt from the blows was “shocking in its intensity.”
“You get beat up for some things out there,” Spencer reflected. “If you talk after the lights are out if you accidentally spill water or milk. I remember one boy was in the school gymnasium. When he put his hands behind his back he stood against these bars on the wall and said, ‘Look. , I’m Jesus Christ!’
“He was whipped very badly for blasphemy. He was a little boy who had a moment of humor. … These were perverted adults who took advantage of these boys … and we had no communication with the outside world.”
Spencer stated that he was allowed to write to his parents once a week. The messages were monitored and he couldn’t tell them what was going on. Spencer later learns that the parents of a student who recently died of a chronic illness still have his letters. They were wet with tears and kissed.
“We were left there at the mercy of some really dangerous people,” Spencer alleged.
Spencer also suffered from loneliness. He often thought of his older sister Diana. The Princess of Wales died in 1997 from injuries sustained in a car accident. She is 36 years old.
“She was the closest person to me growing up,” he said. “We had two older sisters and a younger brother who died. Then there was Diana and I. We were very close. And it was one of the wrecks that was sent. She was sent a year before me. , but for the first few years of my life, we went everywhere together.
“We did everything together. We went to a very sensitive primary school together, a day school, [before boarding school] together. She was a beautiful older sister to a little boy whose parents were divorced and who had a very traditional English education. We were friends.”
In the book, Spencer claims she was charmed and sexually molested by an assistant matron at school at the age of 11. She was 19 or 20, Spencer said. He accused the unnamed matron of preying on other boys under the age of 13. According to Spencer, the alleged abuse involved him losing his virginity by secretly paying a sex worker while on a trip to Italy with his mother. He is 12 years old.
For years, Spencer kept the abuse a secret. But after two failed marriages, Spencer realizes she needs help.
“I was very confused by my endless romantic misadventures, deep unhappiness, and two divorces,” he explains. “I also wanted to do something for my kids that was the spur. I wanted to be good for them, so I could be a good father, I don’t know if they would agree that I managed it, but that was my goal and if I wasn’t a parent, I would probably be right now… I would have continued to cope. [Saying it out loud] helped surprisingly. It didn’t get to the root of the problem, but it sent me to more honest therapy.”
A representative for Midwell Hall did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment. It had earlier told “Today” that it had informed authorities investigating possible crimes against children. School officials are also encouraging any past students with similar experiences to come forward.
Today, Spencer says, he has “really turned a corner” in the past three to four months, especially after writing his book. He still practices “very effective” post-traumatic stress disorder treatment, as well as tai chi and breathing exercises.
“I’ve got a whole arsenal of support techniques to try and get to a better place,” he shares.
According to “Today,” Spencer hired a private investigator years ago to find the woman in question. While she was still alive at the time, he felt it was “too much” to face her. The outlet noted that under British law, there is no statute of limitations for rape and sexual harassment.
Today, Spencer lives about 10 miles from Midwell Hall. He hopes the school will now deal “honestly” with its past.
“I tell [my youngest] it’s not his fault,” Spencer said. “As a kid, you always think it’s your fault. I thought I was a failure as a son to be sent to a place like that and not be part of a family. … But I told him, ‘You’re good. You came out on the other side.'”