MY CHILD ABUSE AT ROYAL SCHOOL
WRITER TELLS HOW SHE OPENED UP ABOUT CRUELTY AT SCHOOL WHERE ROYALS WERE SENT
Miranda Doyle told how staff tormented her and other girls for years.
Learning that other pupils endured the same ordeal gave author strength to report to inquiry Shocking new claims of serious sexual assaults at Prince Charles’s former boarding school have been made to the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry.
The allegations about staff at Gordonstoun in the 1980s were made public by author Miranda Doyle in a memoir published last year.
In it, she reveals she was attacked by a staff member at the school, in Elgin, when she was just 14.
She also tells how she witnessed other female pupils being ordered to strip naked before being thrown into cold baths by a male teacher.
Miranda, 49, decided to speak out after learning she wasn’t the only pupil targeted by her abuser.
She has waived her right to anonymity and given a statement about the abuse she suffered and other incidents she witnessed.
She said: “Gordonstoun wasn’t a safe place to be. It is time to speak out about what happened.”
Miranda still breaks down in tears almost 40 years on at the painful memories.
She included the harrowing experiences in The Book of Untruths, in which she set out to debunk lies she had been told throughout her life.
It details how she was just 11 when a male teacher told girls in her class not to bring bathing suits for their swimming lesson.
Three years later, after Miranda complained of stomach pains, a member of medical staff working at the school carried out an intimate examination he said was needed to check her appendix.
She finally found the strength to speak out after other former pupils shared memoriess of similar ordeals.
Now she hopes ttoo encourage others whoho went to the school – oncence attended by Prince Philip and his sons Prince Charles, Prince Andrew and Prince Edward – to come forward.
Miranda said: “Gordonstoun was supposed to be such a wonderful school – even the Royal Family sent their children there. So many of the pupils feel a lot of shame that they didn’t have a better
time. But I never felt safe there, and it didn’t feel safe for the other children. “I’ve always been seen as a bit of a drama queen, so for a long time I didn’t trust my own memories. “Speaking out makes me feel terrified but I know now I wasn’t the only pupil this happened to.” Miranda started at the affiliated Aberlour House junior school in 1979 – when her family moved to Saudi Arabia for her father’s work – and spent two years there before moving to Gordonstoun senior school for the next five years. Both were founded by Dr Kurt Hahn and shared the same school song, flag and motto. When Miranda was a pupil, they had separate staff, boards of governors and were 20 miles apart. They merged in 2002 and now share the same campus. She said: “In my first year at Aberlour House, before the Christmas holidays, one of the teachers announced the gi rls would have a swimming lesson but because we had already packed there would be no necessity for us to wear our ccostumes. They mightmig get wet. “EveEven at 11, the threthreat of a wet swswimming costume seeseemed too bogus to be trutrue. “If wet costumes were aan inconvenience, wwasn’t it obvious that wwe do something else? ThThe same teacher would alsalso make appearances at wwhat the girls called ‘ birthbirthday baths’. “WhWhen it was someone’s birthdabirthday we tortured one another by throwing the birthday girl in a bath of cold water. “On occasiooccasional mornings, he came intothegirls’dintothegirls’dormitories before the bell. With his help we would strip the birthday girl down and drag her screaming to a waiting bath. “Two of us took one arm apiece, his huge hands clamped hard to her spread ankles.” Edinburgh-born Miranda breaks down in tears at memories of being sexually abused after complaining of a sore stomach. She said: “I was 14 and I hadn’t thought anything was suspicious then. But some time afterwards I had gone to see one of the house tutors. “She a sked about the examination and how many times it had happened.
“When I said twice she wrote it down and said she had been doing an audit of this type of examination. She told me, ‘ When I’ve reached enough of a number maybe I’ ll report him.’”
Miranda doesn’t know if the abuse was ever reported.
When the author, who now lives in Cambridge, joined a private Facebook group for former Gordonstoun pupils, she discovered a younger girl had had the same ordeal at the hands of the same man six years later.
She said: “It’s sad to know others have gone through the same thing but to finally have corroboration felt like a relief. There was a forest of girls probably that this happened to.” Miranda, who has not reported her claims to police and believes her abuser is still alive, said members of the Facebook group spoke of numerous incidents of inappropriate behaviour at the school.
She said: “My sense that those school years had been all wrong was confirmed.”
Ex- pupils gave her guidance and support and that helped her to have the confidence to report her experiences at Aberlour House and Gordonstoun to the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry, which is probing the treatment of kids in care – including at residential schools.
She was terrified at first when interviewed. Miranda said: “I howled for the first 10 minutes without even taking my coat off.
“I saw two people from the inquiry team and I felt worried that I was wasting their time and ashamed that I might be disbelieved.
“It was the most amazing experience to be believed. I know I am not the only former pupil from the school to have given a statement to the inquiry.”
A Gordonstoun spokeswoman said: “We are deeply saddened if any student was harmed while at the school. We have appealed to our alumni, encouraging anyone affected to come forward and will assist the police in any way we can.
“We support the work of the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry which will draw important lessons from the past and make children safer in the future. Today, Gordonstoun has a rigorous approach to chi ld protection.”
A Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry spokesman said: “We would urge anyone with relevant information to come forward.”