‘I’ve proved a point. I have justice of a kind’

For 30 years Joseph ryan lived with nightmarish memories of abuse suffered at a private residential school Underley hall.

only now has anyone been made to pay for what happened at Underley - and it came after Joseph and another ex-pupil, disappointed that police closed a 1997 case, pushed for a second investigation in 2014.

as elderly derrick cooper, one of the founders of the school, starts a 20-month jail sentence for cruelty and actual bodily harm, Joseph finally feels he has achieved ‘a kind of justice’.

aged ten, Joseph was taken down the two-mile driveway of an imposing Jacobean-style building.

it was Underley hall - a residential school for boys with ‘behavioural’ problems. that first journey marked the start of years of torment for Joseph.

pupils at Underley were subjected to a sadistic regime. one punishment was known simply as ‘the towel’.

“i was a victim of ‘the towel’ after being caught smoking by the headmaster, Mr Mayer,” Joseph said. “he had an office and i was taken into it and he pinned me against a wall. i remember him punching me.

“i had to stand on a chair, then he kicked the chair from under me, and knocked me around the room.

“then i had to strip in his office, go back upstairs to the dormitory, put a towel on and take all my clothes back to him.

“i was in a towel, and nothing else for four weeks. Morning break was half an hour in the school yard and i was in the towel during winter. it was extremely cold.

“you went to class in the towel, the dining room, and bed. it was one of their forms of punishment.

“we just thought it was the norm. it was the most degrading punishment they gave us.”

Bizarrely, Joseph had been placed at the school because he was already a victim of physical abuse - he was supposed to be there for his own safety.

he was to spend six years there, an experience that would scar him for life. throughout that period 1980 to 1986 - he would witness and suffer physical abuse.

he remains haunted by his years at Underley. “i am very frightened of strangers. i don’t go out much on my own. i sleep with the light on,” he said. “i still get nightmares of things that happened to me.

“But i’ve proved a point. i have justice of a kind.”