Unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum

Feel free, also, to post your own ( as yet undisclosed) information here.

My PM was to ask if any of the CH management was asked to give evidence in the Husband/Dobbie trial.

Kerry has suggested that one of them was, although [as yet] there is no evidence that they were asked what they knew about ANY of the Husband/Dobbie offences.

The detail of the evidence was not widely publicised in the media. That is not unusual.

You don't have the slightest idea who gave evidence in the trial beyond what you might have read in the media.

I have already told you that what I know will come out in the fullness of time.

I have shared what is appropriate from yesterday's hearing.

richardb wrote: ↑Sat Jul 14, 2018 9:08 pm It would also help if you stop beating on that there is no evidence when ther actually is. Your problem is that no one has told you what it is.

I confess I do have this problem. In other areas JR is extremely cautious about what is posted on this forum.

My suggestion is that we actually wait for the right time to publish information.You, after all, are the lawyer here. When it is appropriate we can and should all know. Until then it is not a good idea to give a fair wind to the rumour mongers IMHO. Or do you disagree?

You have obviously forgotten why you signed up here. You wanted to post a spirited defence of your old colleague Fleming and tell us that he would have passed any information that he received along the management.

His name of course came up in the Husband/Dobbie trial so it appears that management did know.

I don't need you to tell me what I can an can't post. I have a far better idea off that than you do.

You seem to be on here now just to antagonise.

Sniping at each other like this really serves little purpose. We all have our own feelings about what happened; some based on fact others based on conjecture or our own experience of the culture at that time.

I must admit I wish that the case had been more widely reported as there feel like there are many unanswered questions.

Golfer:
Waiting is a sound suggestion but in the meantime perhaps you should refrain from the Befehl ist Befehl defense you mounted the other day for the assistant chaplain and the corporate style "management knowledge" try-on which insults the victims and irritates those of us who sympathize with them for the ordeals they have suffered.

It's shocking that a former teacher from the era that this all happened thinks it's appropriate to be defensive and accusatory, or anything other than very humble and apologetic.

yamaha wrote: ↑Sat Jul 14, 2018 9:31 pm Golfer:
Waiting is a sound suggestion but in the meantime perhaps you should refrain from the Befehl ist Befehl defense you mounted the other day for the assistant chaplain and the corporate style "management knowledge" try-on which insults the victims and irritates those of us who sympathize with them for the ordeals they have suffered.

An interesting characterisation but not what I said. More likely is that she was told not to reveal anything as what she was being told was in confidence (modern training requires teachers to say that this is not possible).
One interpretation has been that there was a hierarchy - church and school - that she couldn't break.
More likely is that she thought that breaking such a confidence would destroy her reputation as a confidante within the school community.

Golfer wrote: ↑Sat Jul 14, 2018 10:02 pm

yamaha wrote: ↑Sat Jul 14, 2018 9:31 pm Golfer:
Waiting is a sound suggestion but in the meantime perhaps you should refrain from the Befehl ist Befehl defense you mounted the other day for the assistant chaplain and the corporate style "management knowledge" try-on which insults the victims and irritates those of us who sympathize with them for the ordeals they have suffered.

An interesting characterisation but not what I said. More likely is that she was told not to reveal anything as what she was being told was in confidence (modern training requires teachers to say that this is not possible).
One interpretation has been that there was a hierarchy - church and school - that she couldn't break.
More likely is that she thought that breaking such a confidence would destroy her reputation as a confidante within the school community.

Told not to by who ?

Getting involved in the semantics of 'management' is just another indirect way of justifying lack of support to the victims at the time the crimes were perpetrated.

One indisputable FACT is that an abused child reported a rape to a chaplain and that was ignored.

It is utterly indefensible that the chaplain did absolutely nothing to support that poor child at the time and I am frankly amazed that anybody is trying to make excuses.

Sometimes in life you have to put your hand up and say 'sorry I got this horribly wrong' and take the consequences.

Of for God's sake this is speculation.

bakunin wrote: ↑Sat Jul 14, 2018 9:47 pm It's shocking that a former teacher from the era that this all happened thinks it's appropriate to be defensive and accusatory, or anything other than very humble and apologetic.

I recognise your righteous anger and disgust for me and since you are a respected person on this site I shall not visit any more.

Mid A 15 wrote: ↑Sat Jul 14, 2018 10:08 pm Getting involved in the semantics of 'management' is just another indirect way of justifying lack of support to the victims at the time the crimes were perpetrated.

One indisputable FACT is that an abused child reported a rape to a chaplain and that was ignored.

It is utterly indefensible that the chaplain did absolutely nothing to support that poor child at the time and I am frankly amazed that anybody is trying to make excuses.

Sometimes in life you have to put your hand up and say 'sorry I got this horribly wrong' and take the consequences.

Spot on.

Golfer wrote: ↑Sat Jul 14, 2018 10:09 pm Of for God's sake this is speculation.

bakunin wrote: ↑Sat Jul 14, 2018 9:47 pm It's shocking that a former teacher from the era that this all happened thinks it's appropriate to be defensive and accusatory, or anything other than very humble and apologetic.

I recognise your righteous anger and disgust for me and since you are a respected person on this site I shall not visit any more.

Don't go Tim. I am just warming up.

I’m sorry, Golfer, but if you are trying to suggest that CH management somehow deserve the benefit of the doubt when it comes to Husband/Dobbie, then that’s going to be a hard case to make.

I see no reason to set aside the Karim case. One doesn’t need to “conflate” that case with the others to register clear evidence that the school authorities of the time placed a low premium on child welfare, up the point of wilful blindness, and apparently still can’t bring themselves to confront reality.

The hypocrisy is rank. On multiple occasions Poulton immediately kicked out pupils found in bed together. Yet he decided to keep Karim on to continue his crimes because he was a “success story”. The absurd, unbelievable excuse: he “had no knowledge” massages of “virtually naked” girls were sexual. Somehow all that inflexible rectitude turned into wheedling circumlocutions like “over familiarity” and “undue physicality” [1].

To see Poulton talk of finding a “soft way” of handling paedophilic indecent assault is nauseating, and I am astonished it has not provoked more outrage. The headmaster you think deserves a sympathetic hearing indisputably did this: He sent a sex criminal on his way with a month’s pay and references recommending him “extremely strongly” as a “great all-rounder”, to do who-knows-what elsewhere [2]. (This from the man who once espoused in chapel Plato’s Republic as a model for school order.)

Cairncross, the school’s “designated child protection officer” went all Iran-Contra: “I can’t recall if I reported it to the child protection services or not” -- so clearly she took that role seriously. If victim testimony is to be believed, Sillett threatened negative publicity and lied about forcing Karim to resign, instead leaving a victim to see her abuser around the school. [3]

So sure, let’s “confine ourselves to the facts that we actually know”. We know that these people have a proven record of failing to confront child abuse, of failing in their responsibilities in the most basic way. And even now they seek to justify themselves with excuses that would be comical if the human cost weren’t so apparent.

Now we find that the rumours were true, that Husband was somehow able to take female pupils away for trips over a multi-year period, with the terrible consequences revealed by his victim; and Dobbie was handing out alcohol to children at sexually-oriented dinners at his house. But you want us to believe that school management, these sedulous protectors of children, would have done something if only they’d known? I’m sorry, but that would take a degree of interpretative charity that was markedly absent from Poulton, in particular with regard to these victims.

Don’t you think, having been in the history department at the time, that it might just have been worth telling pupils what happened to their history teacher, possibly even checking if he had done anything else? Amid all the mystery staff disappearances and rumours there wasn’t a single acknowledgement of inappropriate behaviour by the staff, or any attempt to educate children about the dangers. The responsibilities to children were absolutely clear in this regard, even in the early 90s. They should have been clear to anyone with morals, notwithstanding this finegrain evolution of “safeguarding” you think so important.

But then, as far I’m concerned, the CH you were part of was uncaring in a basic way. The wellbeing of students was taken to be by definition enhanced by their presence at the place, regardless of what happened to them. This is what the “unique ethos” translated to in practice. Thus the unheated dormitories, appalling food, pointless hierarchical privileges, and so on. The “Senior Management Team” was more likely to intervene over the quality of lunch marching than rampant bullying. We were all just so very lucky to be there: how could anyone complain?

There is no “casual condemnation” from me. There is disgust based on publicly available information and my own memories of Poulton’s gross sanctimony.

I thought I’d had a miserable enough time there. I didn’t realise I was one of the lucky ones.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-sussex-43742967
[2] https://www.expressandstar.com/news/uk- ... ess-story/
[3] https://www.independent.ie/world-news/e ... 95540.html

Yossarian your post is absolutely spot on, I wish I could write like that!

The suggestion that staff didn’t know at least enough to ask serious questions is pure nonsense. ‘Golfer’ was (is?) a fine teacher and is clearly a loyal man, but i fear that in this instance that loyalty has extended a bit too far. Because as pupils we saw this stuff happening, and we saw it tolerated. Unfortunately the senior management team of the time wielded much too much power over those they employed and those they had a duty to care for.

Whilst this is a very sensitive and delicate issue, I don’t see any other forum where these questions are able to be raised and discussed, so provided it remains acceptable by admin, and doesn’t cause any undue stress to the victims , let it run.

Thoughts and love to the victims.