A damning inquiry found that Gordonstoun – where the King is now a patron – enabled the sexual abuse of its pupils for decades.
A damning inquiry found that Gordonstoun – where the King is now a patron – enabled the sexual abuse of its pupils for decades
In the space of two months, May followed by June, Gordonstoun, a boarding school set in 150 acres of stately grandeur in the far north of Scotland on the Moray Firth to the east of Inverness, found itself managing two seismic pieces of news: the first bringing profound pride, the second deep shame and regret. The first was news of a high royal honour from the King, a much-needed patronage as it would turn out.
The second, which came last week, was borne of the confirmation of catastrophic historical failings in safeguarding dating back to the 1960s which left children over a 25-year period with the scars of sexual, physical and emotional abuse. Many have never recovered. Some staff members were paedophiles. There was so little safeguarding until at least 1990 that, in turn, older pupils became abusers too, grooming girls and boys in the years below them. The timing for the Palace is little short of disastrous.
Towards the end of May, to mark the first anniversary of his coronation, King Charles, Gordonstoun’s most famous and prestigious living old boy (1962-67), announced that he was to become the school’s patron. He was following in the footsteps of his father, the late Prince Philip, who had thrived at the eccentric and spartan school – cold showers, morning runs, a medical regime so broad brush that children in King Charles’s era joked they were given dog worming tablets for anything “internal”.
The Duke of Edinburgh had joined in 1934 (then Prince Philip of Greece), among the first wave of pupils under the eccentric German founder Kurt Hahn, who had fled the Nazis, and who believed in the collective good of society rather than the needs of the individual. Hahn later remarked on Prince Philip’s “undefeatable spirit” (He left in 1939, just eight years before his engagement to HRH Princess Elizabeth). His royal portrait in the dining hall has watched over generations of boys eating their porridge, including his three sons.