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Charles Spencer was 42 years old when he first revealed that he had been sexually abused as a child.
Princess Diana’s younger brother.who is now 59, initially made the revelation to a therapist after “hitting rock bottom.”
Seventeen years later, the 9th Earl Spencer details the alleged trauma he suffered in a new memoir, “A Very Private School.”
“I was doing a 10-day course of very deep introspection and therapy,” he told Fox News Digital. “My therapist said to each of us, ‘Whisper me a secret you’ve never told anyone.’ I whispered to her that an adult sexually abused me when I was a child. And I remember him being so surprised that he had heard it all. Then she took me aside and said, ‘This is something very serious.’”
“At that stage I already had children,” shared the father of seven children. “I suddenly put it in context. What if one of my children of either sex had been subjected to this when they were 11 years old? He made my blood boil. “Then I began to allow myself to feel the full devastation of what had happened to me.”
At age 8, Spencer enrolled at Maidwell Hall, an elite English boarding school.
The historian said that meeting other former students forced him to relive painful memories of the past.
“Listening to their stories, I was horrified,” he recalled. “There was one (former student) I met up with after not seeing him for 40 years. I learned from his wife that she had never talked about his time at school because it was so traumatizing. He told me how they made him feel worthless every day, how he had been sexually assaulted three times when he was 9 years old by someone who was supposed to protect him.
“I took 10 pages of notes, stopped and said, ‘This is too terrible; I can’t tell this story.’ She came over, grabbed my arm and said, ‘Someone has to do it, it has to be you.’ That convinced me that it was necessary to share the truth with the world.”
Spencer said he found family records dating back 300 years of Spencer’s classmates who attended boarding school.
Courtesy of Charles Spencer
“It was considered essential to send children to places where they could meet the right people,” Spencer explained. “These privileged children would meet each other and form lifelong bonds at a price. You were torn away from your family and would probably be subjected to some pretty brutal behavior.
“But it was a compensation that was and still is, I suppose, among the upper classes of England. They don’t have to worry about raising their children and can continue with their pampered lives. At the same time, the child will gain enormous social advantages and a network of friends that will support those social advantages throughout life.”
Spencer claimed it didn’t take her long to witness (and experience) incidents of alleged abuse behind closed doors.
“It was a brutal experience,” he said. “The director was a sadistic pedophile. He had a very small number of teachers in this place who were… perverts or would never tell stories against him. There was really no one to turn to.
“I think my parents had no idea of the level of cruelty and perversion there was. They would never have sent me there. I think they probably had an old-fashioned view that corporal punishment, beatings, would probably be part of school. But they were a ritual part of every day. We were 72 children and at least half a dozen of us were beaten every day. Your time came very quickly. I don’t think the parents were aware of that.”
Spencer claimed that one student was spanked so badly that he struggled to take off his boxers at night because dried blood and clothing stuck to his skin.
The boy had to sit in a warm bath until the cloth came loose.
The wounds took two weeks to heal.
Spencer alleged in her book that, after tea time, dozens of children disappeared to a private wing, where they endured nightly beatings.
There was no hope that pajama pants would provide any protection.
Spencer said the pain he experienced from the beatings was “shocking in its intensity.”
“There were certain things you’d get hit for,” Spencer mused. “If you talked after the lights went out. If you accidentally spilled water or milk. I remember a boy was in the school gym. He was standing against these bars on a wall when he threw his arms back and said, ‘Look, I’m Jesus Christ!’
“They whipped him very severely for blasphemy. He was just a little boy who had a moment of humor. … They were perverted adults who took advantage of these children… and we had no communication with the outside world.”
Spencer claimed that she was allowed to write a letter to her parents once a week.
The messages were monitored and he couldn’t tell them what was going on.
Spencer later learned that the parents of a student, who recently died from a long terminal illness, still had his letters.
They were stained with tears.
“They just left us at the mercy of some really dangerous people,” Spencer alleged.
Spencer was also plagued by loneliness.
He often thought about his older sister, Diana.
The Princess of Wales who died from injuries she suffered in a car accident in 1997. She was 36 years old.
“She was the closest person to me growing up,” he said. “We had two much older sisters and a little brother who had died. Then there was Diana and me. We were very close. And, actually, that was one of the devastations of being kicked out. She was sent a year before me, but for the first few years of my life we went everywhere together.
“We did everything together. We went to a very quiet primary school together, a day school (before boarding school). She was an absolutely lovely older sister to a boy whose parents were divorced and had received a fairly traditional English education. We were allies.”
In the book, Spencer claimed that a school matron’s assistant groomed and sexually abused him when he was 11 years old.
He was about 19 or 20 years old, Spencer said.
He alleged that the unnamed midwife took advantage of other children under the age of 13.
According to Spencer, the alleged abuse led to him losing his virginity by secretly paying a sex worker during a trip to Italy with his mother. She was 12 years old.
Over the years, Spencer kept the abuse a secret.
But after two failed marriages, Spencer realized she needed help.
“I was so confused by my endless romantic disasters, my deep unhappiness, and my two divorces,” he explained. “I also wanted to do something for my children. Actually, that was the incentive. I wanted to do better for them, so I could be a better father. I don’t know if you would agree that I achieved it, but that was my goal. And I think if I hadn’t been a father, I probably would have continued to… cope. (Saying it out loud) was surprisingly helpful. “It didn’t get to the root of the problem, but it pushed me to pursue more honest therapy.”
A spokesperson for Maidwell Hall did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
He previously told “Hoy” that he has notified authorities investigating possible crimes against children.
School officials are also encouraging former students with similar experiences to come forward.
Today, Spencer said, “he’s really turned a corner” in the last three or four months, especially after writing his book.
He is still doing “very effective” treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder, in addition to Tai Chi and breathing exercises.
“I have a whole arsenal of support techniques to try to get to a better place,” he shared.
According to “Today,” Spencer hired a private investigator years ago to track down the woman in question. While she was alive at the time, he felt it would be “too much” for him to confront her.
The outlet noted that, under British law, there is no statute of limitations for rape and sexual assault.
Today, Spencer lives about 10 miles from Maidwell Hall.
He hopes the school will now address its past “in an honest way.”
“I would tell (my younger self) that it wasn’t his fault,” Spencer said. “When you were a kid, you always think it’s your fault. He used to think that he must have failed as a son to be sent to a place like that and not be part of the family. …But I told him: ‘You’re fine.’ You’ve come out the other side.’”