Letter to the Head Master

This section was setup in August 2018 in order to move the existing related discussions from other sections into this new section to group them together, and separate from the other CH-related topics.

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richardb
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Re: Letter to the Head Master

Post by richardb »

I don't remember reading on here about any sort of appeal for victims to come forward, so I a left wondering how come so many people have all come forward "at once".

I can only think that the ball was set rolling with one complaint to Franklin (as per Rob Totterdell's first post) who has then directed that the school investigate what other complaints there have been over the years and then given that information to the police.

So the school probably know the scale of what has gone on but are not willing to admit t it.
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Re: Letter to the Head Master

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Re: Letter to the Head Master
Post by Katharine » Thu Aug 09, 2018 9:02 am

I am sure that most of us who read this forum were thinking that it was time CH was investigated in the same way
CH is excluded from Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse?
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Re: Letter to the Head Master

Post by Katharine »

As far as I understood, and I hope to be corrected, that it could be included but hasn't yet been focussed on in the wat Ampleforth and Downside have. This morning there was a fleeting reference to Protestant schools, not just RC ones.
Katharine Dobson (Hills) 6.14, 1959 - 1965
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Re: Letter to the Head Master

Post by yamaha »

There doesn't seem to be any sectarian bias at iicsa. They appear to be diligently investigating Ball/Lancing.
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Re: Letter to the Head Master

Post by Katharine »

I meant on the Today programme, not IICSA
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Re: Letter to the Head Master

Post by michael scuffil »

From many years of conversation with people who went to other boarding schools, I doubt if CH is a special case or really deserves special mention. Downside and Ampleforth are of public interest because of the wider child-abuse scandal affecting the Catholic Church worldwide. Ampleforth in particular is interesting because for many years its headmaster was the future Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Basil Hume, the spokesman of English Catholicism. CH cannot match these dizzy heights...
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Re: Letter to the Head Master

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J.R. wrote: Wed Aug 08, 2018 10:50 pm
rockfreak wrote: Wed Aug 08, 2018 6:28 pm Sorry to go Back to Buck again. It was my information to JR that caused him to close the AH Buck site way back when.

A quick pedantic note. I don't think Buck left on a Sunday. I remember going up to Big Side with a friend, the two of us laden with bats and pads for a house cricket match (a non-Sunday event) and seeing Seaman and Buck pacing up and down the Quadrangle cloister deep in what looked like serious conversation. We looked at each other and said: "I wonder what that's about!" I think we may have jumped to conclusions. That evening Seaman, minus Buck, came in to house prayers to deliver the news. Sunday night would of course have been chapel rather than house prayers. I might be open to correction here but these are the events as my distant memory has them.
What can I say Freaky, or should I say David Redshaw, a name and face I cannot place from Col B days. I'm starting to think your memories come from dreams or supporting medication.

If you are who you say you are, then identify yourself from the Coleridge B photo I posted in the school photos section.

I have looked at your Farcebook page and from recent photos on there narrowed you down to four Grecians possibilities, none with the correct name.
The reason you can't identify me from the house picture you posted is because I'm not in it. I'd left the school in 1960. Do you mean that you've tried to identify me from my own Farcebook page (as you delicately put it)? Not much use I imagine since the pictures are from recent years, one of me balanced neatly on a little crag in the Eden Valley, and the other of me at my middle daughter's wedding. I was never a grecian by the way. I achieved little at school and seem to be the Original Anonymous Man. Anyway, I am looking at three house photos. In one of them, 1960, I am top row second left between Orton and Crowe, and you are front row centre, bang in front of the proverbial NTF, and with three house cups on display. The smallest of them is minute. Perhaps we got it for tiddlywinks. In another picture, the one you posted, you are right behind the eccentric Dicko.
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Re: Letter to the Head Master

Post by J.R. »

rockfreak wrote: Thu Aug 09, 2018 1:15 pm
J.R. wrote: Wed Aug 08, 2018 10:50 pm
rockfreak wrote: Wed Aug 08, 2018 6:28 pm Sorry to go Back to Buck again. It was my information to JR that caused him to close the AH Buck site way back when.

A quick pedantic note. I don't think Buck left on a Sunday. I remember going up to Big Side with a friend, the two of us laden with bats and pads for a house cricket match (a non-Sunday event) and seeing Seaman and Buck pacing up and down the Quadrangle cloister deep in what looked like serious conversation. We looked at each other and said: "I wonder what that's about!" I think we may have jumped to conclusions. That evening Seaman, minus Buck, came in to house prayers to deliver the news. Sunday night would of course have been chapel rather than house prayers. I might be open to correction here but these are the events as my distant memory has them.
What can I say Freaky, or should I say David Redshaw, a name and face I cannot place from Col B days. I'm starting to think your memories come from dreams or supporting medication.

If you are who you say you are, then identify yourself from the Coleridge B photo I posted in the school photos section.

I have looked at your Farcebook page and from recent photos on there narrowed you down to four Grecians possibilities, none with the correct name.
The reason you can't identify me from the house picture you posted is because I'm not in it. I'd left the school in 1960. Do you mean that you've tried to identify me from my own Farcebook page (as you delicately put it)? Not much use I imagine since the pictures are from recent years, one of me balanced neatly on a little crag in the Eden Valley, and the other of me at my middle daughter's wedding. I was never a grecian by the way. I achieved little at school and seem to be the Original Anonymous Man. Anyway, I am looking at three house photos. In one of them, 1960, I am top row second left between Orton and Crowe, and you are front row centre, bang in front of the proverbial NTF, and with three house cups on display. The smallest of them is minute. Perhaps we got it for tiddlywinks. In another picture, the one you posted, you are right behind the eccentric Dicko.
I haven't got access to the 1960 photo, which would have been my first year at the hallowed halls of Coleridge B.

Odd that the three other inmates of Col B you mentioned were all a bit "Off the wall" !
John Rutley. Prep B & Coleridge B. 1958-1963.
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Re: Letter to the Head Master

Post by postwarblue »

I can't seem to see the 1960 photo (or ANY of Lieberman's) but if it's a very small cup it is probably the Meek Pancake Cup given by Miss Meek, Mrs Ritches' prdecessor as Coleridge matron, for the Col A vs Col B Shrove Tuesday pancake race.
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Re: Letter to the Head Master

Post by J.R. »

postwarblue wrote: Thu Aug 09, 2018 2:46 pm I can't seem to see the 1960 photo (or ANY of Lieberman's) but if it's a very small cup it is probably the Meek Pancake Cup given by Miss Meek, Mrs Ritches' prdecessor as Coleridge matron, for the Col A vs Col B Shrove Tuesday pancake race.
I think you are right, PWB. I seem to remember that tiny cup now.
John Rutley. Prep B & Coleridge B. 1958-1963.
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Re: Letter to the Head Master

Post by Sweyn Forkbeard »

The apparently different treatment of different schools by different police forces is a bit of a concern. Two years ago one of my daughters received a phone call from Lincolnshire Police asking if she could tell me to get in touch with them - cue much panic! Turned out they were investigating an abuse case at my primary school in the 1960s and wanted to speak to EVERY person who had attended at the time. This is good - though I'm afraid their approach via a daughter was a bit bizarre especially as I am easily traced via the internet and live only 10 miles from their HQ!

The teacher, who I recall as only slightly sinister and for reading us the entire 'Hobbit/Lord of the Rings' canon in class (no idea what he was teaching....) was duly convicted.

Have Sussex Police attempted to do this with CH? No. Why not? It is well known that in cases such as these many people do not 'come forward' yet will respond if asked. Maybe it is just a question of resources…..
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Re: Letter to the Head Master

Post by rockfreak »

yamaha wrote: Wed Aug 08, 2018 8:59 am
I was fortunate enough, thanks to CME Seaman, Old Blue, headmaster of CH, ... to get a job
St. Clarence? Surely not?
I wonder what he did for Buck's victims?
It's a good point. If the sainted Clarence had duly recorded all this in the school records then Buck would presumably not have been able to pull the wool over so many people's eyes after Seaman died, scoring an 80th birthday celebration at CH and then a funeral with full military honours (as Michael Scuffil put it) attended by so many older Blues (who perhaps had no knowledge of the abuse) but also some from Buck's later days in school (who definitely did). Given all this, it puts a dubious light on what appears to be a lachrymose, pompous, hypocritcal and puke-making chapel service for the old man (as we used to call him). To me this typifies everything that was rotten then about the public school system and the class system, and if current news from the courts in Sussex (and the protestations from posh members of posh tennis clubs) are anything to go by, nothing much has changed.
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Re: Letter to the Head Master

Post by LHA »

rockfreak wrote: Fri Aug 10, 2018 8:29 pm
yamaha wrote: Wed Aug 08, 2018 8:59 am
I was fortunate enough, thanks to CME Seaman, Old Blue, headmaster of CH, ... to get a job
St. Clarence? Surely not?
I wonder what he did for Buck's victims?
It's a good point. If the sainted Clarence had duly recorded all this in the school records then Buck would presumably not have been able to pull the wool over so many people's eyes after Seaman died, scoring an 80th birthday celebration at CH and then a funeral with full military honours (as Michael Scuffil put it) attended by so many older Blues (who perhaps had no knowledge of the abuse) but also some from Buck's later days in school (who definitely did). Given all this, it puts a dubious light on what appears to be a lachrymose, pompous, hypocritcal and puke-making chapel service for the old man (as we used to call him). To me this typifies everything that was rotten then about the public school system and the class system, and if current news from the courts in Sussex (and the protestations from posh members of posh tennis clubs) are anything to go by, nothing much has changed.
Do we know what Buck got up to after leaving? When was the 80th birthday and the funeral?
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Re: Letter to the Head Master

Post by sejintenej »

Sweyn Forkbeard wrote: Fri Aug 10, 2018 8:04 am The apparently different treatment of different schools by different police forces is a bit of a concern. Two years ago one of my daughters received a phone call from Lincolnshire Police asking if she could tell me to get in touch with them - cue much panic! Turned out they were investigating an abuse case at my primary school in the 1960s and wanted to speak to EVERY person who had attended at the time.

The teacher, who I recall as only slightly sinister and for reading us the entire 'Hobbit/Lord of the Rings' canon in class (no idea what he was teaching....) was duly convicted.

Have Sussex Police attempted to do this with CH? No. Why not? It is well known that in cases such as these many people do not 'come forward' yet will respond if asked. Maybe it is just a question of resources…..
A primary school back then was one thing but CH had 100 - 120 leavers every year. In just 20 years that is 2000 plus to interview.
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What happens if all of them drown? That is solution!!!
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Re: Letter to the Head Master

Post by LHA »

sejintenej wrote: Sat Aug 11, 2018 7:37 am
Sweyn Forkbeard wrote: Fri Aug 10, 2018 8:04 am The apparently different treatment of different schools by different police forces is a bit of a concern. Two years ago one of my daughters received a phone call from Lincolnshire Police asking if she could tell me to get in touch with them - cue much panic! Turned out they were investigating an abuse case at my primary school in the 1960s and wanted to speak to EVERY person who had attended at the time.

The teacher, who I recall as only slightly sinister and for reading us the entire 'Hobbit/Lord of the Rings' canon in class (no idea what he was teaching....) was duly convicted.

Have Sussex Police attempted to do this with CH? No. Why not? It is well known that in cases such as these many people do not 'come forward' yet will respond if asked. Maybe it is just a question of resources…..
A primary school back then was one thing but CH had 100 - 120 leavers every year. In just 20 years that is 2000 plus to interview.
Maybe. But the school not publicising Webb's first sentence in 2015 can't have helped.
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