Conductor reveals horrors of child sex abuse
CONDUCTOR Charles Hazlewood has said he had to go on a “long process of recovery” due to the sexual abuse he suffered as a child.
The 53-year-old, who has worked with some of the world’s finest orchestras, said on the BBC’S Desert Island Discs that he felt “ready to share the hidden part” of his life in public for the first time after more than a decade of healing and therapy.
Hazlewood told host
Lauren Laverne he had decided to talk about it because
“abuse is something which thrives on secrecy, that is the toxic energy which it derives its power from”.
He said: “I was the victim of sexual abuse through most of my childhood.
“All of the paedophiles that I knew as a child, they sold it to me as a form of love and that is the most confusing and corrupting thing to get a child to invest in and believe in.
“It fundamentally messes up your entire wiring so I would just say to anyone who is frightened that they might have some of that in them, don’t ever kid yourself that this is love.
“Don’t ever kid yourself that the child can be an equal partner in this.
“All you are doing is giving them a stain and a whole bunch of damage inside them which will probably last their entire life.”
Hazlewood said he did not discuss the abuse he was suffering with anyone despite the fact he was showing a lot of behaviours that would be questioned by parents in the present day.
He said he had felt “suicidal quite a lot of the time” after being sent away to boarding school because of his behaviour.
But he added: “I have been incredibly, incredibly lucky to have my beautiful wife and my beautiful children around me, holding my hand and hugging me and just holding me tight and safe as I have made my way through.”
● Desert Island Discs is on BBC Radio 4 today at 11am and on BBC Sounds.