Charles Spencer is opening up about his experiences of being sexually and mentally abused during his time as a student at the U.K. school Maidwell Hall.
“We were like prisoners. We were prey to very bad people’s worst instincts,” Princess Diana’s youngest brother, 59, shared in an interview with Today on Monday, March 11. After initially going to the same “day school” as Diana, Charles began attending Maidwell Hall at the age of 8.
“This is not a bunch of mid-teen, late-teen kids going through a rough school,” he said of the educational establishment. “This is children being sexually, physically and emotionally abused on a daily basis.”
Charles went on to describe the school’s headmaster as a “pedophile and a sadist” who staffed the school with “people who were going along with what he was doing or were gonna be mute about it.”
Charles claimed the abuse he and others suffered included being beaten with cricket boots and canes. “We all had showers together after sports, and you could see the blood, the split skin,” he revealed.
One alleged abuser was a young female staff member who looked after Charles and other students. “She would come around to my bed when others were asleep and kiss me, you know, French kiss, for ages,” Spencer stated. “If I was 17, 18, it would be a different thing, but I was 11. It was so confusing.”
Admitting that he found the encounters “thrilling” at the time, Charles said he remembers “cutting himself” whenever the female staff member would pretend “she was going to have to leave early to keep us all on tenterhooks.” He added: “I thought if I hurt myself enough, then God will let her stay.”
He said the female staff member led him down a path to losing his virginity to a prostitute on a trip to Italy at age 12. “I see that as the completion of what she had done to me,” Charles explained.
Charles said he did not share his experiences until he met with a therapist at age 42. “I told a friend of mine about this recently, and he said, ‘I just can’t believe you weren’t protected,’ as if coming from this incredibly privileged background somehow would be a protection against pedophiles and sadists,” he told Today. “But there is no protection against those sorts of people. The most important code of this very flawed regime was never to tell tales.”
He also offered a theory as to why families of the students never spoke out about the abuse, “The old money there sort of felt, ‘Well, this is gonna make my son tougher and more successful,’” Charles stated. “And then people who had made money more recently thought, ‘Well, this is what they do, and we want to be a part of this set.’”
Charles details more of his childhood experiences in his new memoir, A Very Private School, which hits bookshelves on Tuesday, March 12. He dedicates the book to his younger self, who was nicknamed “Buzz.”
“That was the nickname I had in my family before I went to Maidwell, and that was the boy that had part of him snuffed out during those five years at the school,” he shared. “I wanted to reconnect with the carefree, happy little guy I was before I was sent to this place.”
Maidwell Hall said in a statement to NBC News that they were working with local authorities to look into the alleged abuse. “We will follow their guidance on what we do from this point,” the statement said. “We would encourage anyone with similar experiences to come forward and contact [those officials] or the police.”
If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).
