CBetts wrote:We also take this opportunity of inviting anyone who wishes to take part in the reconciliation process...to contact us in the normal way at St James Senior School for Boys on communications@stjamesboys.co.uk.
David Boddy Headmaster St James Senior School for Boys"
Yet, on the inquiry website (see.... http://www.iirep.com/page10.htm )
The Governors have seen the reconciliation in several steps, and will now be writing to all those complainants and teachers who were named in the Inquiry, offering help with facilitation if the reconciliation process is felt to require it.
Has anyone who participated in the inquiry heard ANYTHING from the schools since the report was published over 5 weeks ago??? Has anyone received any form of written apology or an invitation to take part in any reconciliation process?
Its hard not to be sceptical that reconciliation is a smokescreen. It also irritates me that the Governors (or is that Boddy) are implying there is an established process - does anyone have any idea what that process is?
For me reconciliation means:
1. A face to face meeting followed by a written apology from Lambie accepting (on behalf of the SES) their wrongdoing and the damage caused to me by the negligence of the organisation.
2. A face to face meeting followed by a written apology from Roger Pincham accepting (on behalf of the Governors) their wrongdoing and the damage caused to me by the negligence of the Board of Governors at the time.
3. A face to face meeting followed by a written apology from Nicholas Debenham accepting (on behalf of the St James Schools - pre 2004) their wrongdoing and the damage caused to me by him and members of his staff during the period I was a pupil at the school.
As for some of the individual teachers who abused me... I may be able to decide what reconciliation with them means to me when I have got the list above.
The Governors / Boddy have rightly said, reconciliation is a personal thing and will mean different things for different people.
As a starting point, the OED definition....
RECONCILIATION: verb
1 restore friendly relations between.
2 make or show to be compatible.
3 (reconcile to) make (someone) accept (a disagreeable thing).
Why I should want number 1 is beyond me.
Number 2 is never likely given the nature of the SES.
For me reconciliation means number 3 - then I can truely leave that aweful place and the people who abused me behind!
A offer of a friendly tour of the current St James premises has nothing whatsoever to do with reconciliation and I have no intention of taking it up - are they for real? Do they have any concept of what some of us went through? They just dont seem to get it.
What does 'reconciliation' mean to other former pupils, if anything?
I have held back on making a formal complaint to the Metropolitain Police because Im not interested in pursecuting individual former (or possibly current) teachers, however dispicable there behaviour may have been. For those who have questioned limitation periods for criminal prosecutions - there is none!
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