The school of secret abuse.

Sadly, a seemingly all too common story of the terrible crimes trusted adults can inflict on innocent children. Incredibly, Ian is no victim but a brave fighter with a determination to bring abuse of this kind to attention. A remarkable man.




 

The long drive that leads to the entrance of prestigious Caldicott Preparatory School took young Ian McFadyen into a world that couldn't be further removed from his granny's humble Leith home.

Inside the school's imposing facade were the sons of the well-to-do, of society figures and well-known celebrities. In some cases there were boys who, like fellow pupil Nick Clegg, would go on to find fame and celebrity.

Young Ian's hardworking parents had hoped the £20,000-a-year boarding school would set up their son for life. Sadly, in the worst way possible, they were right.

For there, in a quiet corner of a master's room, as the busy school day turned to dusk, with the door firmly bolted and the safety of home far away, their frightened young son was systematically, brutally raped.

Deputy headteacher George Hill had a private bathroom in his study, a bathroom made available for certain little boys to whom he took a particular liking. And being one of the outwardly charming and kind Mr Hill's favourite boys meant enduring vicious sexual abuse that would dramatically alter the course of Ian's life forever.

Years later, down and out on the streets of Edinburgh and in a thick fog of drink and drugs as his life spiralled out of control, Ian's privileged public school background and career spent working in some of the world's most luxurious hotels made him among the city's oddest beggars.

Crashed out in a stairwell between the George Hotel and the church next door, he would stagger into a 12-hour shift begging outside Sainsbury's before topping up with his fix and heading to Lothian Road to tap the late-night revellers for cash.

Years of trying to suppress the secret of his Caldicott school days had dramatically exploded. And Ian, the innocent victim of schoolroom paedophiles who had tried to cover his despair with wild and erratic behaviour, was finally broken.

"I was assaulted from eight to 14," he says, matter-of-fact. "I knew that I was keeping a secret and the impact on my life was enormous.

"I saw myself as a bad person, a man without honour who did not need or deserve respect. I caused mayhem and chaos in my life.

"I remember standing on the Dean Bridge thinking I'd just jump because I could never be a good person."

More recently, and after a gruelling battle to have his voice heard by a reluctant legal system, Ian has finally seen one of his tormentors jailed. The school's headmaster is also at last behind bars, while another teacher convicted of abuse at the school died under the wheels of a train hours before sentencing.

The man Ian calls his "worst abuser", George Hill, committed suicide without ever being charged. Another stood trial twice and has been acquitted.

At least now that the abuse which seeped through the school for almost 30 years involving dozens - maybe even hundreds - of boys has emerged, Ian can finally forgive.

"To move on I need to offer them some form of forgiveness," he shrugs. "I need to forgive.

"If we say 'they are animals, let's hang them, let's destroy them', we demonise them. They aren't demons, they are people you trust and they are men from ordinary places. If we stigmatise them and make them like sub-human, we allow them to hide and they go deeper."

Ian was eight when his parents enrolled him at Caldicott, convinced the South Buckinghamshire prep school would give him the best foundation possible in life.

His parents, Moira and Michael, had worked hard to establish a good standard of living, running luxury hotels in London and then further afield in the Middle East. The school, with its sprawling grounds, Victorian main house and short 20-mile commute to London seemed perfect.

But, as it soon became crystal clear, appearances can deceive.

Certainly the school's deputy headmaster appeared charming and considerate to parents. But Ian would eventually learn that behind his teacher's uniform of tweed jacket with leather elbow patches lurked a manipulative predator who cleverly convinced his young victim that being sadistically raped wasn't only perfectly normal, it was a privilege.

"My worst abuser was George Hill. He was brutal," recalls Ian, 47. "He took huge pleasure from inflicting pain whilst he raped you.

"I was nine years old," he adds, softly. "And he was like the grandfather I never had."

The abuse took place in Hill's private bathroom which, on certain nights of the week, would be opened to boys on a rota basis. Ian would know days in advance when his turn had come.

"There was a matron across the landing," he adds, and nearly four decades later he still can't understand how the cries of a little boy in the hands of a rapist were never heard.

"But I knew the power the headmaster, Peter Wright, had.

"Mr Hill was the first person apart from my parents I told that I loved," he continues, choking on the words. "I felt complicit in my own abuse. I felt that was what love was.

"So when I hit puberty and started understanding what had occurred, I couldn't cope. I completely went off the rails."

His goodbye gift to Caldicott involved overdosing on alcohol and having his stomach pumped. He smoked heroin for the first time soon after and by the time he was 14 he was seeking group sex with other men.

"I left little boys behind to be hurt and said nothing," he says.

"No-one would have believed me, but in the psyche I fell into, I walked away and left other people to be hurt. That was a lot of guilt to carry.

"I was completely confused, I didn't have a clue what my sexuality was. I was offering myself to the gay community. It was risky behaviour but I had no value for myself."

Opportunities to follow his parents' lead and work in the luxury hotel industry in the Middle East emerged, and soon Ian was in exotic locations, balancing a glamorous lifestyle and five-star living with the demons that continued to haunt him.

"I had fantastic opportunities," he says. "I had a glam lifestyle, I ran hotels in the Middle East, I worked in Dubai, Oman, Hawaii. I had a flat in Morningside at the age of 18, but I drank too much and took drugs to the point of not knowing how I didn't do myself in.

"Then it all came crashing down."

He had been dabbling with crack cocaine and accumulated GBP20,000 of debts when his father died, shattering his hopes of sitting down with him and explaining the grim reasons behind his erratic behaviour.

Distraught, Ian, by now in his late 20s, quit work in Hawaii and returned to his Northumberland Street home in Edinburgh where grief, drink and debt combined to tip him into a full-scale breakdown.

As he struggled with his demons, bills mounted. Fearing his home was about to be repossessed, he packed his belongings, including his father's wedding band, into a case which he deposited never to see again at Waverley station's lost luggage, and lived on the streets.

"I looked like a typical spoilt public schoolboy," he says. "I hit the streets never having been a violent person, I was like a lamb. I came off the streets like a lion. I was incredibly aggressive and justified it by saying I needed to be to survive.

"I hit the streets with a real problem with alcohol, I left with a massive heroin addiction. There's a lot I'm positively ashamed about."

Homeless charity Streetworks provided precious support.

After nearly two years living rough and begging, Ian battled back to health to work with the organisation as a homeless outreach worker. He was working with homeless charity Fresh Start when it featured on Channel 4's award-winning programme Secret Millionaire.

He met wife Paula ten years ago. Her support encouraged him to finally reveal the dark events of his childhood, while at the same time opening up a whole new emotional rollercoaster.

"I have major problems forming relationships," he confesses. "When sexualised at a young age like that, I saw every intimate relationship as a form of abuse. I have a real difficulty being affectionate.

"I can't say 'I love you', I'll say 'I adore you' instead. I could sleep with multiple partners yet struggle with intimacy and closeness. And yet I worship the ground my partner walks on."

Ian is now determined to focus on moving on, perhaps running a social enterprise-style business in Peebles where he now lives, helping young people who have fallen into difficulty by offering them work.

And he is keen to raise awareness of the need for counselling services and help for male victims of abuse.

There is also some unfinished business. For when fellow Caldicott former pupil Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg appeared on a radio show phone-in, Ian was quick to corner him with pleas to introduce stricter legal requirements on schools to notify police of sex abuse claims.

The hope is, he adds, that abuse can never be ignored or covered up again.

"After the headmaster, Peter Wright, was sentenced, Nick Clegg was quoted as saying he was shocked and appalled," sighs Ian, "but you'd have to be blind to be there and not know something was going on.

"As a child, probably not but as an adult with hindsight? Definitely."

 

 

 

Tormentors brought to justice

 

Last February, Ian McFadyen sat with other brave former Caldicott pupils in Amersham Crown Court to witness some justice being delivered.

Decades had passed, but finally former headmaster Peter Wright, 83, was found guilty of ten charges of indecent assault and two of indecency involving boys aged between eight and 13 at the school between 1959 and 1971. He was jailed for eight years.

Getting the case to court involved guts and determination for victims who, along with Ian - a pupil at the school from 1975 to 1980 - found themselves hampered by an apparently reluctant legal system for years.

Another of the school's paedophile teachers, Hugh Henry, 82, died under the wheels of a train days before he was due to be sentenced for his sex assault crimes.

John Addrison, 54, was a former Caldicott pupil who as a student teacher took the opportunity to sexually abuse Ian during one-to-one tutorials. He was sentenced to five years in 2012 after admitting sex offences against pupils there and at another school.

Ian's chief tormentor, George Hill, killed himself before any charges could be brought.

Another teacher who Ian accused of indecently assaulting him stood trial twice. The first case ended with a hung jury and he was acquitted following a retrial.

Male rape survivors need specialist help

Realising he was ready to confront his years of abuse was hard enough. But Ian McFadyen found his next challenge was finding someone to speak to.

Edinburgh Women's Sexual Abuse and Rape Centre provided some support, but as a male victim of sexual abuse, he needed specialist help.

"There is very little out there to help men," he points out. "Men have definite needs to help them." He eventually contacted In Care Survivors, a Fife-based group which supports people who had suffered abuse in care environments.

However, he says there is a desperate need for more services for men who have suffered childhood abuse.

"The impact of sex abuse doesn't stop when someone is 16, it follows you through the rest of your life."

 

From Edinburgh Evening News 20 March 2014

Meet James McLevy - the original number 1 detective

Another oldie, may have posted  previously and maybe a bit out of date with reference to radio programmes and so on, but still kind of interesting. Hopefully.

 

 

LURKING in the eerie closes, the crowded, stinking tenements and along the Old Town's dark, damp wynds, petty crime, debauchery and all forms of human brutality festered. Pilferers, pickpockets, prostitutes, vagrants, robbers and burglars. And, very often, murderers.

It was Edinburgh in the mid-19th century, the birthplace of the Enlightenment, a respected seat of learning and home to the cream of Scottish society.

But, as Irish farmer's son James McLevy quickly discovered, Scotland's capital was also a rich melting pot for its vile, lawless dregs. So it was just as well that he was on the case.

Officially named on Edinburgh City Police's payroll records as their 'number 1' detective in a team of six, over three decades McLevy was involved in around 3000 cases.

McLevy's name went on to become famed in the annals of police history, thanks to his own diaries recording in vivid, sometimes caustic and often humorous detail the crimes, the people and the city streets where he worked.

Edinburgh's criminals were said to have fled at the sound of his giant footsteps, but it was his unique detection methods - one moment rubbing shoulders with the criminal fraternity, the next probing the educated minds of Edinburgh University's professors using scientific advances to develop clues - that sealed his reputation.

He might have been forgotten had he not published - in the 1860s - his account of his investigations.

And now his name and his position at the heart of Edinburgh's budding police force is - perhaps ironically for a man said to have been the inspiration for Sherlock Holmes - providing the heart and soul for yet another Edinburgh fictional crimefighter.

McLevy's name has already been loaned to a BBC Radio 4 crimefighting character, loosely based on his 150-year-old writings but given a dramatic edge by actor and author David Ashton.

Currently in its fifth series - "quite an accomplishment for radio," declares Ashton - he has now moved into print to with the Inspector McLevy Mystery novels. Eventually it's hoped that tales of the crimefighter, born in County Armagh, who trained as a linen weaver and came to Edinburgh to work in the trade, could make the transition to TV - perhaps even played by the actor who has brought the radio character to life, Hollywood-based star Brian Cox.

It's a remarkable revival for a detective whose writings were adored by Victorian readers. Even back then, it seems, everyone loved tales of a good Edinburgh detective.

"I was doing research for a television play about Conan Doyle and came across a passing mention of James McLevy," recalls David. "I asked at the British Library and after what seemed like a couple of hours this book appeared, a sorry looking thing, falling to pieces and tied up with a piece of dingy ribbon.

"I opened it up and it was like entering another world. Here was this person with this wild humour which I liked, a kind of grandiose quality, someone who really fancied himself as a philosopher with a big character.

"He was known as 'Jamie McLevy, the thief taker' and this idea of him being so proud of what he was doing struck me. I saw the kernel of a character."

While his two novels - Shadow of the Serpent was published last year, and the second, Fall From Grace, is about to come out - use McLevy's name and an outline of his character in a string of fictional episodes, the real McLevy was just as fascinating.

He pounded a beat that took in Edinburgh's Old Town slums and Leith crime hotspots, areas like Calton Hill and Princes Street which were popular with pickpockets, and the slums of the High Street and Canongate.

McLevy had decided the best way to solve crime was to mix with the pickpockets, prostitutes, body-snatchers and thieves, using the information some let slip to drive down the crime rate, and mingling with the population in plain clothes, undercover.

He used his ability to blend into a crowd to great effect to snare notorious pickpockets Holmes and Angus McKay. The pair had taken to following McLevy to his home in Old Fishmarket Close each night to ensure he was safely out of the way before they went out looking for victims - a tactic that didn't impress McLevy.

"And what made it worse was that they thought I was utterly ignorant of all this care taken of me," he wrote.

So, he hatched a plan, perhaps the first recorded example of a police sting.

Aware that one of Holmes' favourite tricks was to use a woman, who was known as The Swan, to sing in public to attract a crowd whose pockets he could then pilfer, McLevy waited until the thieves had followed him home.

Then, heavily disguised, he crept out to join the crowd as they enjoyed the music. As Holmes sneaked up, ready to dip McLevy's pockets, one of his colleagues nabbed him.

"The strains of The Swan were hushed; nor did she begin again; she was too much affected to be able to sing when her tender mate was in the claws of the eagles," wrote McLevy.

On another occasion, he revelled in what amounted to hero worship from women after snaring three child-strippers - a 19th century crime which saw well-dressed youngsters stripped naked in the streets by thieves who then sold the stolen clothing.

As for his love life, McLevy wasn't averse to becoming involved with female criminals.

Jean Brash, known as the Princess of Pickpockets and the Queen of Thieves, plied an alternative trade from a beehive-shaped brothel known as the Happy Land in Leith. McLevy was a regular, and she was one of the few criminals to outwit him.

Former police inspector John McGowan studied McLevy as part of a masters degree course.

"That he existed is without doubt," he says. "But just how much of what he wrote about was true, how much was anecdotal and how much had been changed to make the story... well, who knows?"

Fall From Grace, An Inspector McLevy Mystery by David Ashton, is published by Polygon

 

30 May 2007

Evening News - Scotland

EENS

English

(c) The Scotsman Publications Ltd.

POSSESSION AND OBSESSION

THE shocking case of a young woman who vanished on her way to work in Edinburgh ended in her former lover's arrest in connection with her murder.
Suzanne Pilley's body has not yet been found. But her ex, David Gilroy, was found guilty of killing her. During his High Court trial, disturbing evidence emerged of his actions in the days and weeks leading up to her disappearance.
This article appeared in the Edinburgh Evening News after a jury had returned their 'guilty' verdict.

 

THE REAL LIFE FATAL ATTRACTION

IT WAS supposed to be all over. When Suzanne Pilley told David Gilroy their relationship had finally come to an end, it should have been time for both to just move on.

Of course, what happened then is now a tragic chapter in Edinburgh's criminal history.

In the month before she went missing, married Gilroy, 49, bombarded bookkeeper Ms Pilley with more than 400 text messages. He turned up unexpectedly at her flat. And at one point, a neighbour told the court how a man fitting Gilroy's description was prowling around outside her home.

Far from taking "no" for an answer, twisted Gilroy seemed to take rejection as an invitation to relentlessly stalk and hound his ex-lover.

Tragically, it was a real-life fatal attraction that would have the most heart-breaking conclusion imaginable.

Now behind bars for Ms Pilley's murder, Gilroy will be sentenced on April 18 - by sheer chance the same day Justice Secretary Kenny McAskill will officially launch National Stalking Awareness Day at the Scottish Parliament, an event aimed at promoting zero tolerance of stalking.

Of course, most break-ups do not end in anything like the tragedy that unfolded for Suzanne and her grieving family. Yet it's estimated that there are more than 120,000 stalking incidents in the UK each year.

The Network for Surviving Stalking (NSS) believes ex-partner harassment - perpetrated by the likes of Gilroy - is the most prevalent type, in around 50 per cent of cases.
Clearly it's far from normal behaviour.

So what exactly is the root of the problem? What goes on in the minds of some that prevents them from simply accepting that a relationship is over? And why do they then resort to desperate - sometimes violent - measures to try and win their partner back?

According to Beverley Stone, a relationship psychologist and author of Stay or Leave? Six Steps to Resolving Your Relationship Indecision, it is love that is to blame. "It's simply because they're still in love. They can't understand their partner's feelings have changed and they're convinced they can change their mind," she says.

Pleading phone calls can follow, and "accidentally" turning up at the same places can start. They might even try and involve other parties. "Getting friends to talk to you and try to persuade you to change your mind isn't uncommon," warns Stone, adding that they're working on the theory your friends will make you realise that breaking up was a mistake.

Endless texts and phone calls, not necessarily containing obvious threats - Gilroy's apparent mode of attack - are another typical warning sign of an ex-partner who's failed to cope with romantic rejection.

While it's a giant leap between annoying, clingy behaviour to outright violence, according to psychologist Ann Moulds, who founded Action Scotland Against Stalking after being hounded by a stalker who'd send her vile, sexually explicit material through the post, ignoring their behaviour could be fatal.

"Some of the most dangerous stalkers never actually issue an overt threat," she says. "You can imagine them saying 'but all I did was send her flowers or a letter, there was nothing threatening', but this can be someone who has a total fixation on another.

"It's gender-based violence, it's cultural attitudes towards women. Think of fathers giving their daughter away to another man - possession," she adds."But there are also cases where it's a personality disorder. People who simply can't take rejection, there's jealousy and they need to have power."

Hoping they will just give up and go away can be a fatal mistake. Lynsey Methven, 31, was hounded by her ex, 43-year-old builder Frank Moore, after she ended their relationship in December 2010. Some phone messages were threatening, others desperate protestations of love.

Ms Methven and her new boyfriend, chef Stewart Taylor, 33, did not report his behaviour to the police. Instead, they hoped he'd eventually just go away.

But Moore didn't go away. He returned to Ms Methven's flat in the Grange in January last year, beat Mr Taylor, leaving him dead, and torched the property, leaving his ex-girlfriend badly injured.

According to Edinburgh-based chartered psychologist Ben Williams, there are certain characteristic traits that can have links to "stalking" behaviour. "First of all there's this egocentricity of certain people. Their rules seem to be 'I am right, you said you loved me'. They are not ready to change their minds.

"Others can't appreciate how other people feel, they are detached. They are not very empathetic to others. "Some people are prone to emotional fixations. They are so entangled with a boyfriend or girlfriend they can't let them go. They play the same records over and over again because it reminds them of when they first met. They go to the same places they used to go together, the same holidays.

"Even when they move on into a new relationship or even marriage, they will hear a record and go into a depressed state because it reminds them of that person."

A broken relationship sparks a kind of mourning process, he adds. "There is shock,
disbelief, rage and perhaps thoughts of revenge, fantasy - 'they'll come back to me' stage - depression, guilt and cold realisation that it's over.

"The problem is when some people get fixed at a point in that process - and if it's the rage stage, it can be when things turn bad."

Most recent Scottish stalking and harassment statistics available, from last year, show that five per cent of men and six per cent of women have experienced stalking and harassment. The report from Scotland's chief statistician also showed younger age groups are more likely than older to be victims - 11 per cent of 16 to 24 year olds reported at least one form of stalking and harassment in the previous 12 months, compared with two per cent of those aged 60 and over.

The majority - 62 per cent - of those who experienced stalking and harassment knew the offender, 12 per cent had seen them before but did not know them, while 23 per cent did not know them at all.

Scotland is ahead of England in dealing with stalking and harassment cases. A specific offence of stalking was created in December 2010, punishable by up to five years in jail.

More than 400 people were prosecuted in the first year.

Earlier this month, the sheriff court in Lithlithgow heard how stalker Lavakumar Ramathasan, 29, terrorised his ex-girlfriend, Simmy Panesar. Every day he waited for her at Linlithgow train station, sitting next to her and constantly pestering her as she travelled to Stirling University.

He also bombarded her with telephone calls on a daily basis. Ms Panesar eventually
called police and Ramathasan, who now lives in London, was arrested.
He appeared in court after earlier having pleaded guilty to engaging in a course of conduct which caused her fear and alarm.

However, according to Ann Moulds, it's virtually impossible to assess the full extent of stalking and harassment as many cases go unreported. "It can be very difficult to go to the police about someone who you've had a relationship with or, in Suzanne Pilley's case, who you work beside.

"Stalkers display obsessive, fixated or jealous behaviour and it's important to act because you don't know where it could lead - perhaps to violence, rape or murder," she adds.

"We know people still don't recognise stalking behaviour even when it's happening to them," says Network for Surviving Stalking chief executive Alexis Bowater. "Even though we may feel uncomfortable with someone's obsessive behaviour - all too often we put up with it.

"We think stalkers are sinister figures - like in films. In reality, stalkers can be ex-partners, friends or people you know."

She says more than one million women and 900,000 men report being stalked in the UK every year. But 77 per cent of stalking victims don't report the situation until more than 100 incidents have occurred - which could put lives at risk.

She advises erring on the side of caution and listening to our own alarm bells: "So often we don't trust our own instinct," she adds. "People make us feel uncomfortable but we've been conditioned to ignore it - laugh it off, hope the problem goes away."

*Picture posed by models.

Legal stance

Scotland has legislation in place to help take criminal action against stalkers and harassing behaviour. And civil courts can also provide support for victims. "You can go to court and get an interim interdict to prevent wrongful contact," says Steven Goldie of Brodie's solicitors. "And by attaching a 'power of arrest', should the person breach the interim interdict, they can be arrested."

The Scotsman Publications Limited Appeared Edinburgh Evening News, www.edinburghnews.com. 23 March 2012