Lady Smith, Chair of the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry (SCAI), has today, 10 November, published her findings relating to the provision of residential care for children at The Edinburgh Academy.
Edinburgh Academy pupils suffered decades of dreadful abuse
She concludes that, for decades, pupils suffered ‘dreadful abuse’, while the school focused on protecting its reputation and ignored complaints.
The findings are SCAI’s seventeenth volume of findings and eighth in the boarding schools case study. They detail more than 40 years of sexual, physical, and emotional abuse at the school.
Lady Smith said: ’For decades, the school failed to look at itself through a realistic and critical lens. It is clear it was assumed that abuse did not and would not take place; when it did, the school could not accept that it had happened, failed to address it, and failed to recognise the risk of it continuing. Complacency was the order of the day.
’When complaints were made, they were either disbelieved or left unresolved. Staff chose not to notice and avoided intervention or investigation despite there being obvious signs of abuse.’
The perpetrators of the abuse included two long-serving members of staff: Hamish Dawson, a housemaster and Senior School teacher, and John Brownlee, a housemaster and deputy head of the Junior School. They also included a Prep School teacher, Iain Wares, who went on to abuse at Fettes College, and William Bain, a physics teacher, now a twice-convicted sex offender, who began his lengthy history of abuse at The Edinburgh Academy before moving on to harm children in other schools.
One applicant, with the pseudonym ‘Henry’, enjoyed many aspects of his nine years as a pupil at the school but nonetheless powerfully described experiencing and witnessing abuse which was ubiquitous in the daily lives of the children. He said: ’It was normal to groom 11 year olds with jelly babies, touch them up, and use sadomasochistic sex toys to molest them in front of 20 others.
’It was normal to kick, hit, and strangle, to the point of unconsciousness, 10 year olds. It was normal to inflict physical punishment with a plank of wood with no good reason.
’It was normal for grown men to inflict psychological belittlement on children. It was normal to allow endless cycles of bullying to go unnoticed or unchecked and the bullied becoming bullies ad infinitum.
’It was normal … to completely ignore flagrant racism, sexism, homophobia. It was normal to have no safeguarding. It was normal to have no risk assessment.’
’It was normal to have no abuse reporting policy or mechanism obvious to the pupils. It was normal for there to be no pastoral care, and it was normal to be somewhere where nobody, not one person, loved or genuinely cared for you.’
Lady Smith said: ’None of this behaviour was ”normal”. Or acceptable. It was simply abusive.’
The school’s high opinion of itself, particularly academically, made matters worse. As recently as 2001, the Court of Directors focused on reputation and how The Edinburgh Academy was perceived, rather than how life actually was for its pupils.
Lady Smith said: ’Hamish Dawson’s ”eccentric” behaviour in the classroom was known about, yet it was celebrated by the school. When pornography was found in his desk, nothing was done about it.
’The various ”instruments of correction” – also known as ”instruments of flagellation” and ”instruments of torture” – which he had used to abuse pupils were auctioned on his departure from the school.’
The sexual abuse perpetrated at the school took a variety of forms and extended over four decades, from the 1950s to the 1980s. Some children were sexually abused by other children.
Physical abuse was normalised, with violence being an aspect of an aggressive culture which was present in the school – a culture which persisted into the 1990s. Children in the Prep School were regularly beaten, often in circumstances which amounted to abuse, until corporal punishment was abolished, which was not until 1988.
Prior to the abolition of corporal punishment, staff received only limited guidance and no training about its use. Indeed, there was very little child protection training at all until into the twenty-first century.
Following the introduction of co-education in the sixth form, girls were the targets of unpleasant and abusive misogyny. There was no evidence that the school gave any consideration to the obvious risks involved.
Homophobia was rife at the Academy. Racism was prevalent even in the Prep School. It involved anti-English sentiment, and some children were abused by other pupils because of their colour or because they were Jewish.
The Edinburgh Academy’s Court of Directors and its rector, Barry Welsh, have acknowledged there were significant shortcomings at the school both in decades long past and more recently. They have apologised on behalf of the school for the abuse experienced by so many children entrusted into its care.