A grandson of Sir Winston Churchill has revealed that he was abused as a child while boarding at a Brighton prep school and said that he was “completely unembarrassed about it”.
Rupert Soames, chairman of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), spoke about his childhood on a podcast called “Crisis What Crisis?”
The businessman, who went on from his Brighton prep school to Eton, said that “nothing bad ever happened at Eton”.
The abuse had occurred when he was at St Aubyns, in Rottingdean, in the 1960s when he was between the ages of seven and 12.
Mr Soames told the podcast that he had a “very privileged upbringing” and a “generally fabulous education”.
He said: “I was sent to boarding school at seven … and it had some of the sins of boarding schools, including some masters who had an entirely unhealthy appetite for young boys.
“So it wasn’t completely plain sailing from that point of view and the only reason why I mentioned it (is) because I was subject to some very poor behaviour.”
He said that he was abused, adding: “There’s nothing to be sorry about it. It happened but the only reason I bring it up is because I’m completely unembarrassed about it.
“Many, many worse things have happened to many people but I think that it was maybe part of helping me learn behaviours and coping mechanisms which proved to be useful in later life.
“(I learnt) the idea that hiding things and not talking about them is a really bad idea, letting things become a sort of sepsis in your brain.
“And when I watch some of these inquiries into historical allegations of sex abuse at schools or whatever, my heart goes out to the people who, in their forties and fifties, are still harbouring truths that go back late into their lives and have probably never talked about it.
“And I can only imagine the pain that you get from that if you’ve never talked about it, if it has been allowed to grow as an incubus inside your brain, and then suddenly age 40 or 50 it comes out. I mean, it must be horrific.
“Whereas me – being a happy-go-lucky sort of chappie – was making jokes about it at dinner parties when I was 16.”
Mr Soames said that the abuse had been “confronted”, with one of the teachers going to prison.
He also said that his parents were aware but that he “never felt remotely abandoned or unloved or anything like that”.
He credited being able to speak about his experiences as helping him to gain resilience, adding: “I don’t want to make a big thing about it. It’s not been a huge thing in my daily life.”
Mr Soames, a long-time business executive who has led major companies, was elected CBI chairman last year.
After starting his career at the General Electric Company (GEC), he became known in the business world for running security company Serco for nine years and Aggreko, a power company.
His older brother Nicholas, now Lord Soames of Fletching, was a long-serving Conservative MP, first for Crawley then Mid Sussex, and a government minister.
He also went to St Aubyns, which closed in 2013. Dozens of new homes have since been built on the site.
Pity abuse is not taken more seriously with his position in life . He could help a lot more than he thinks .
250 immigrant children have gone missing in Brighton.
1 in 4 family court cases are not the biological father in Brighton. Contact centres can’t cope with all the false allegations of abuse made against fathers .
Families are being coached by solicitors that mothers are financially better off as a single parent. That you will be believed in court .
There is no help for fathers . And lying in court goes unpunished. So guess what the advice is for winning?
Gosh! St. Aubyns! I was at St. Martha’s Convent just along the road in Rottingdean opposite Kipling’s house.
There should be an inquire into the child abuse or childhood rapes that happened in boarding schools in the 60’s, 70’s and 80s added to this and what happened in the name of God by priest and nun’s and in children’s homes?
It’s the sin that has been sweepted under the carpet, we who have been abused can never get over this, my head master abused me on my first night and everyday after that until he was removed from the school, finally we were believed.