Keir,
Very well said indeed. What you say quoted below had particular resonance for me. I recently had a discussion with my parents when they apologised for sending me to St James, but suggested that if I had complained about it they would have removed me from the school straight away. I know I did complain about it, all the time, but they simply didn't listen.
The reason for their closed minds was that the SES had taken away parents' ability to think objectively, to look at the brutal things they knew the school was doing to children as young as 6 and say, 'Hold on a minute, you simply can't treat my children like this'. The SES had brainwashed them to think of everything outside the SES, and all alternatives to St James, as hostile and unworthy.
As a young boy in an environment where all the adults you knew were complicit, eventually you realised that there was no point complaining - not to your parents, and not even to your friends and classmates.
Keir, I hope you have contributed to the Inquiry, or if you haven't, that you will do so. You have a great deal to say.
Daffy
Keir wrote:It is worth noting the cultural blanketing that resulted from having parents in the SES, going to a school run and staffed by SES members, with most of your friends parents also in the SES and going to the SES yourself as well. In that environment, the obedience demanded not only from the pupils in the day schools but also from the parents in the SES became a little more sinister. It led to a culture of unquestioning acceptance of the behaviour of staff and senior SES members, however near the knuckle in terms of abuse. As a child in that environment I became aware that my complaints to my parents were not being taken seriously so after a while realised that there was no point in complaining.