Sex and St James Girls School
Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2006 7:03 pm
The internally funded, independently chaired inquiry reports in point 5.10 ?For the avoidance of any possible doubt, I came across no evidence of any form of sexual abuse in any of the Schools.?
http://www.iirep.com/Report/report.htm
But sex abuse is one thing, sexual exploitation is another. Below is most of the text of a letter I sent to Mr. Townend, in the hopes that he would expand the scope of the inquiry from ?past discipline policy and its application? (Appendix 1 Terms of Reference) to current and recent allegations of a pattern of matchmaking by school administrators between recent girl?s school leavers and much older, long-term SES members. So while perhaps it is true that Townend did not ?come across evidence of?sexual abuse,? neither did he actively investigate allegations of sexual impropriety, which would have expanded the scope of the inquiry Terms of Reference he was given by Mr. Boddy and the St. James administrators.
Dear Mr. Townend,
I am an adult student at the School of Practical Philosophy in New York, a satellite of the School of Economic Science. I came to the school looking for a survey of Western philosophy, and found what I think of as an advaita Vedanta study group. Advaita Vedanta is the philosophy/religion which forms the basis of yoga as a spiritual practice. I teach and practice yoga, and was initially delighted to find what I thought of as a ?yoga Bible school,? a group dedicated to reading, discussing, and practicing advaita.
However, the dress code, which requires women to wear a long skirt to class after some unspecified point, worried me. I did a Google search for ?Leon Maclaren? and found the www.ses.whyaretheydead.net site, among others.
I want to emphasize that I have never myself attended St. James or St. Vedast, or been to a SES adult meeting. My own contact has been only with the New York adult school, starting in September of 2004. But since November 2004 I have been following the postings on the WATD site.
I?m very troubled by the idea that girls at St. James are currently ?encouraged? to marry men much older than themselves, and that this ?encouragement? is coercive. The school seems to have an unofficial policy to introduce sixth-form female students to men belonging to the SES, at special dinners, or on lightly supervised residential weekends. More than one recent St. James girl has written about dating relationships and subsequent marriages forming between teenage girls and their chaperones, tutors, and teachers. I hope that you will be able to investigate this.
Below is a brief index of relevant posts on the www.ses.whyaretheydead.net site. The SES has historically advocated a traditional service role for women, arranged marriages, and that a man should choose a wife two-thirds his own age. This sort of history seems relevant to me when evaluating whether the match-ups between young girls leaving SES-sponsored schools and decades-older SES men are exploitative. In this environment, I fear that St. James and the SES pushes some girls into marrying much older men, with little thought for the girl?s own desires.
I have no confidence that the St. James governors or Christine Betts will supply you with these posts. I hope you will be able to investigate the current St. James practice of ?grooming? further, either via private message with the posters below or through talking with current students in the fifth or sixth form.
The excerpt below is a cut & paste quote from ?SES Schools Action: Inquiry Update?
Harriet Somerville
?we were all led to believe we were prostitutes, there for mens pleasure, not our own and to serve and obey them.
http://www.whyaretheydead.net:/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=242&start=0
Excerpts below taken from ?Just discovered this! From ex-pupil of Girls school? thread:
Grimep
We KNOW the level of control the SES exerts over personal relationships- that potential couples in the SES seek guidance from their SES tutors?
There's a very serious allegation raised here which I feel is in danger of being buried: that the SES has subtle mechanisms in place to encourage girls who enter the Youth Group to be married to much older SES men.. their reward for many years of loyalty and service to the school. Even if only one girl a year goes down this route isn't that one too many?
T.S
Re: Grooming -yes- yuck! At 16 a dinner was organised with older men from the SES. I didnt get it immediatley even though there was an exact number of these weasels to match the girls, Someone asked why one man who we knew wasn't there and the answer as if it was obvious-'Hes married'. One girl got drunk and found herself in the back of a car ( consentually whilst very pissed) then I got asked out by this man in his 30's who was our chaperone in our school holiday in Italy.
Shout (Post subject: Reply to Shona Rose, on pg 5 of thread)
I did briefly encounter some of the girls at Old Boys/Girls events to ask them if they were told to marry an older man: 'Yes...take care of you', one said, bewildered, as if it was the most normal thing in the world. A different girl didn't seem to mind telling me about the sex on Foundation girl weekends, and another proudly defended it, even when it was between girls and men who were 'tutors'.
When I was in Foundation Group we were instructed that it was 'the natural law' to marry a woman 2/3 our age I think, or as the Freudian slip sometimes came out: 1/3. (maybe that was 3/4 and 1/4 -can't remember)
End excerpts
http://www.whyaretheydead.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=255&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=30
The following is a complete post from ?SEScaped? on the ?Gender Discrimination? thread:
SEScaped
Would like to add a few more colourful experiences on this topic that demonstrate how the ses stjames attitude towards women creates potentially vulnerable situations for its pupils.
When i was 15 I told my tutor at SES that there was an older man that I found attractive (happened to be the only man in the whole of SES who had ever taken time to be nice to me). I talked to my tutor in (what i believed at the time) was confidence - i wanted her advice and just to talk about it with someone (yes - i know it was foolish!). Within a week my father had been called in for a meeting with one of the top men in SES who had suggested to him that a meeting was set up in order to get me and the man I had mentioned together with a view to potential marriage. Luckily my father was completely horrified by the suggestion and point blank refused to take it any further. Here is an example of how a school girl crush could have turned into a lifetime nightmare.
Example 2 is a little different but in many ways more sinister and involves an older man (he was 33) outside the SES. When I was 17/18 an older brother of one of the teachers came to give us a talk. A few months after the talk I recieved a letter from him saying that he had noticed me during the talk and thought i was attractive and would like to take me out. For a start he should never have been able to access my address through the school just because his sister was a teacher. I agreed to go out with him for a meal - and we met up a few times subsequently - I did not find him at all attractive, he took me round to see his friends in order to show off that he had managed to get such a young girl, he also constantly tried to get me to have sex with him saying that many women had been very grateful to him for the experience!! Needless to say I was backing away very quickly at this point! What happened next is, I think, completely out of order. As we were coming to the end of our time at St J we had to have a leaving ball (the girls had to organise / pay for / cook for this event and then ask a man to go with them). I had not yet decided who to ask to the ball when I recieved a phone call from the same older man WHO I HAD NOT ASKED AND NEVER INTENDED TO ASK saying that of course he would go to the ball with me. My own form teacher had taken it upon herself (without consulting me) to invite him for me through his sister.
I have since heard rumours that I am not the only st j girl that this same man got involved with in this way - he told me that he found the mysterious, untouchable , innocent aspect of st James girls facsinating and attractive.
In actual fact this whole episode makes me laugh now - but that does not alter the fact that through the school I was put in a position that made it difficult for me to distance myself from this man.
http://www.whyaretheydead.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=282
The excerpts below can be found on the ?St James Girl?s school ? remembered? thread:
Tamsin
you have also highlighted the common practice at St James of isolating and humiliating girls by painting them as sexually precocious and therefore dangerous.
Daska
if something bad happens to you, you must have provoked it because you're female, therefore it is your responsibility not to let this happen and if something does happen then, because you're female and it is therefore your fault, you must apologise and be punished
because eventually it becomes habitual, you learn to punish yourself for your crime of getting people to be nasty to you
Sugarloaf
I always found the practice of encouraging teenage girls (who showed the correct SES attributes of course) to marry teachers twice their age, immediately on leaving school, particularly questionable. (exactly when did these relationships start - while they were still at school?).
http://www.whyaretheydead.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=234&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0
Excerpt from page 32 of ?EXPERIENCES AT ST VEDAST (now St James) AND THE SES? [url]
Sarah
I avoided a lot of the more worrying aspects of the school e.g. the Foundation group, encouragement of the older girls to marry very unsuitable men etc etc.
http://www.whyaretheydead.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=105&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=465
The SES/SOP has a history of arranging marriages between members, and of students asking tutors, level heads or heads of school for permission to marry. All of the below excerpts are from the ?SES schools worldwide? thread:
Erikdr
In most cases that I know of, it was the people [adult students] taking the initiative. Mostly the man, and then the lady got a 'suggestion from her tutor', although in the case I know best both persons turned to Van Oyen [former Dutch school head] and asked for a match.
But if at least one side did not have the initiative (e.g. the lady and the suggestion), it was clearly not easy to turn the suggestion down.
Note that the Dutch practice started quite a few years later than the one in London, and seems to have been less wide-spread. London was active already from the seventies as far as The Secret Cult writes, and of course Sir M was the only suitable matchmaker...
Goblinboy
More on the marriage question ? I know that members of the School of Philosophy (SES?s antipodean franchise) had to seek permission to wed from the local head of the school, and possibly still do.
Daska
re grooming - Lots of girls have married SES men (including some teachers, youth group and senior men) who were older than them - I went to some of the weddings. It certainly wasn't disapproved of and I don't even remember any comments being made about it being inappropriate, they were very much along the line of 'isn't she lucky'. Not all the marriages have worked but that's hardly uncommon, just because you grow up and marry in SES doesn't mean you're immune to social trends and other pressures. Arranged marriages certainly happened and as far as I am aware were not successful, and I think I would be right in saying that at least two of the men involved in these moved on to even younger girls for their second marriages which have lasted far longer.
Free Thinker
As of when I left the NY school about 8 years ago, people were still asking permission from either the head or their tutors to marry. I know a wonderful, happily-married couple who didn't marry for a long time because the school said "No."
[url]
http://www.whyaretheydead.net/phpBB2/vi ... 1&start=30[/url]
Also see ?No sexual abuse in SES/SOP?? a thread begun after the Townend report was published:
Keir
I am sorry to say that I heard many 'stories' about men in the SES offering lifts home to young women after large meetings, only for them to be molested in the back of the car on the way home.
I agree with James that it is the individual that is sick for him to attempt to physically force himself on a teenage girl, let alone that he is 'known' for it amongst the teenage girls.
http://www.whyaretheydead.net:/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=446&start=0
To my knowledge, only one poster, ?T.S?, has described sexual humiliation as a disciplinary tactic, where a teacher used forced nudity as a form of punishment, at ?Just discovered this! From ex pupil at Girls school?
T.S
I went to St James girls school for 10years from 1981-91. As with so many others this was utter hell which still haunts me daily?
We were all 11 years old. Fooling around between class a group of girls had tried to pull up my skirt and by accident it had torn. My form teacher dicovered the tear and as a punishment made me stand infront of the class in my underwear. Having just entered puberty this was horridly humiliating. She then made all the other girls take off their dresses too. It was an age where you hadnt got your first bra yet but were no longer flat chested- I remember other's tears.. But most of all I remember the harrowing pleas of a new girl who had severe burns on her skin and had always been careful to never reveal them. She begged to not remove her dress but the teacher forced her too anyway.
http://www.whyaretheydead.net:/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=2455&highlight=#2455
http://www.iirep.com/Report/report.htm
But sex abuse is one thing, sexual exploitation is another. Below is most of the text of a letter I sent to Mr. Townend, in the hopes that he would expand the scope of the inquiry from ?past discipline policy and its application? (Appendix 1 Terms of Reference) to current and recent allegations of a pattern of matchmaking by school administrators between recent girl?s school leavers and much older, long-term SES members. So while perhaps it is true that Townend did not ?come across evidence of?sexual abuse,? neither did he actively investigate allegations of sexual impropriety, which would have expanded the scope of the inquiry Terms of Reference he was given by Mr. Boddy and the St. James administrators.
Dear Mr. Townend,
I am an adult student at the School of Practical Philosophy in New York, a satellite of the School of Economic Science. I came to the school looking for a survey of Western philosophy, and found what I think of as an advaita Vedanta study group. Advaita Vedanta is the philosophy/religion which forms the basis of yoga as a spiritual practice. I teach and practice yoga, and was initially delighted to find what I thought of as a ?yoga Bible school,? a group dedicated to reading, discussing, and practicing advaita.
However, the dress code, which requires women to wear a long skirt to class after some unspecified point, worried me. I did a Google search for ?Leon Maclaren? and found the www.ses.whyaretheydead.net site, among others.
I want to emphasize that I have never myself attended St. James or St. Vedast, or been to a SES adult meeting. My own contact has been only with the New York adult school, starting in September of 2004. But since November 2004 I have been following the postings on the WATD site.
I?m very troubled by the idea that girls at St. James are currently ?encouraged? to marry men much older than themselves, and that this ?encouragement? is coercive. The school seems to have an unofficial policy to introduce sixth-form female students to men belonging to the SES, at special dinners, or on lightly supervised residential weekends. More than one recent St. James girl has written about dating relationships and subsequent marriages forming between teenage girls and their chaperones, tutors, and teachers. I hope that you will be able to investigate this.
Below is a brief index of relevant posts on the www.ses.whyaretheydead.net site. The SES has historically advocated a traditional service role for women, arranged marriages, and that a man should choose a wife two-thirds his own age. This sort of history seems relevant to me when evaluating whether the match-ups between young girls leaving SES-sponsored schools and decades-older SES men are exploitative. In this environment, I fear that St. James and the SES pushes some girls into marrying much older men, with little thought for the girl?s own desires.
I have no confidence that the St. James governors or Christine Betts will supply you with these posts. I hope you will be able to investigate the current St. James practice of ?grooming? further, either via private message with the posters below or through talking with current students in the fifth or sixth form.
The excerpt below is a cut & paste quote from ?SES Schools Action: Inquiry Update?
Harriet Somerville
?we were all led to believe we were prostitutes, there for mens pleasure, not our own and to serve and obey them.
http://www.whyaretheydead.net:/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=242&start=0
Excerpts below taken from ?Just discovered this! From ex-pupil of Girls school? thread:
Grimep
We KNOW the level of control the SES exerts over personal relationships- that potential couples in the SES seek guidance from their SES tutors?
There's a very serious allegation raised here which I feel is in danger of being buried: that the SES has subtle mechanisms in place to encourage girls who enter the Youth Group to be married to much older SES men.. their reward for many years of loyalty and service to the school. Even if only one girl a year goes down this route isn't that one too many?
T.S
Re: Grooming -yes- yuck! At 16 a dinner was organised with older men from the SES. I didnt get it immediatley even though there was an exact number of these weasels to match the girls, Someone asked why one man who we knew wasn't there and the answer as if it was obvious-'Hes married'. One girl got drunk and found herself in the back of a car ( consentually whilst very pissed) then I got asked out by this man in his 30's who was our chaperone in our school holiday in Italy.
Shout (Post subject: Reply to Shona Rose, on pg 5 of thread)
I did briefly encounter some of the girls at Old Boys/Girls events to ask them if they were told to marry an older man: 'Yes...take care of you', one said, bewildered, as if it was the most normal thing in the world. A different girl didn't seem to mind telling me about the sex on Foundation girl weekends, and another proudly defended it, even when it was between girls and men who were 'tutors'.
When I was in Foundation Group we were instructed that it was 'the natural law' to marry a woman 2/3 our age I think, or as the Freudian slip sometimes came out: 1/3. (maybe that was 3/4 and 1/4 -can't remember)
End excerpts
http://www.whyaretheydead.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=255&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=30
The following is a complete post from ?SEScaped? on the ?Gender Discrimination? thread:
SEScaped
Would like to add a few more colourful experiences on this topic that demonstrate how the ses stjames attitude towards women creates potentially vulnerable situations for its pupils.
When i was 15 I told my tutor at SES that there was an older man that I found attractive (happened to be the only man in the whole of SES who had ever taken time to be nice to me). I talked to my tutor in (what i believed at the time) was confidence - i wanted her advice and just to talk about it with someone (yes - i know it was foolish!). Within a week my father had been called in for a meeting with one of the top men in SES who had suggested to him that a meeting was set up in order to get me and the man I had mentioned together with a view to potential marriage. Luckily my father was completely horrified by the suggestion and point blank refused to take it any further. Here is an example of how a school girl crush could have turned into a lifetime nightmare.
Example 2 is a little different but in many ways more sinister and involves an older man (he was 33) outside the SES. When I was 17/18 an older brother of one of the teachers came to give us a talk. A few months after the talk I recieved a letter from him saying that he had noticed me during the talk and thought i was attractive and would like to take me out. For a start he should never have been able to access my address through the school just because his sister was a teacher. I agreed to go out with him for a meal - and we met up a few times subsequently - I did not find him at all attractive, he took me round to see his friends in order to show off that he had managed to get such a young girl, he also constantly tried to get me to have sex with him saying that many women had been very grateful to him for the experience!! Needless to say I was backing away very quickly at this point! What happened next is, I think, completely out of order. As we were coming to the end of our time at St J we had to have a leaving ball (the girls had to organise / pay for / cook for this event and then ask a man to go with them). I had not yet decided who to ask to the ball when I recieved a phone call from the same older man WHO I HAD NOT ASKED AND NEVER INTENDED TO ASK saying that of course he would go to the ball with me. My own form teacher had taken it upon herself (without consulting me) to invite him for me through his sister.
I have since heard rumours that I am not the only st j girl that this same man got involved with in this way - he told me that he found the mysterious, untouchable , innocent aspect of st James girls facsinating and attractive.
In actual fact this whole episode makes me laugh now - but that does not alter the fact that through the school I was put in a position that made it difficult for me to distance myself from this man.
http://www.whyaretheydead.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=282
The excerpts below can be found on the ?St James Girl?s school ? remembered? thread:
Tamsin
you have also highlighted the common practice at St James of isolating and humiliating girls by painting them as sexually precocious and therefore dangerous.
Daska
if something bad happens to you, you must have provoked it because you're female, therefore it is your responsibility not to let this happen and if something does happen then, because you're female and it is therefore your fault, you must apologise and be punished
because eventually it becomes habitual, you learn to punish yourself for your crime of getting people to be nasty to you
Sugarloaf
I always found the practice of encouraging teenage girls (who showed the correct SES attributes of course) to marry teachers twice their age, immediately on leaving school, particularly questionable. (exactly when did these relationships start - while they were still at school?).
http://www.whyaretheydead.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=234&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0
Excerpt from page 32 of ?EXPERIENCES AT ST VEDAST (now St James) AND THE SES? [url]
Sarah
I avoided a lot of the more worrying aspects of the school e.g. the Foundation group, encouragement of the older girls to marry very unsuitable men etc etc.
http://www.whyaretheydead.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=105&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=465
The SES/SOP has a history of arranging marriages between members, and of students asking tutors, level heads or heads of school for permission to marry. All of the below excerpts are from the ?SES schools worldwide? thread:
Erikdr
In most cases that I know of, it was the people [adult students] taking the initiative. Mostly the man, and then the lady got a 'suggestion from her tutor', although in the case I know best both persons turned to Van Oyen [former Dutch school head] and asked for a match.
But if at least one side did not have the initiative (e.g. the lady and the suggestion), it was clearly not easy to turn the suggestion down.
Note that the Dutch practice started quite a few years later than the one in London, and seems to have been less wide-spread. London was active already from the seventies as far as The Secret Cult writes, and of course Sir M was the only suitable matchmaker...
Goblinboy
More on the marriage question ? I know that members of the School of Philosophy (SES?s antipodean franchise) had to seek permission to wed from the local head of the school, and possibly still do.
Daska
re grooming - Lots of girls have married SES men (including some teachers, youth group and senior men) who were older than them - I went to some of the weddings. It certainly wasn't disapproved of and I don't even remember any comments being made about it being inappropriate, they were very much along the line of 'isn't she lucky'. Not all the marriages have worked but that's hardly uncommon, just because you grow up and marry in SES doesn't mean you're immune to social trends and other pressures. Arranged marriages certainly happened and as far as I am aware were not successful, and I think I would be right in saying that at least two of the men involved in these moved on to even younger girls for their second marriages which have lasted far longer.
Free Thinker
As of when I left the NY school about 8 years ago, people were still asking permission from either the head or their tutors to marry. I know a wonderful, happily-married couple who didn't marry for a long time because the school said "No."
[url]
http://www.whyaretheydead.net/phpBB2/vi ... 1&start=30[/url]
Also see ?No sexual abuse in SES/SOP?? a thread begun after the Townend report was published:
Keir
I am sorry to say that I heard many 'stories' about men in the SES offering lifts home to young women after large meetings, only for them to be molested in the back of the car on the way home.
I agree with James that it is the individual that is sick for him to attempt to physically force himself on a teenage girl, let alone that he is 'known' for it amongst the teenage girls.
http://www.whyaretheydead.net:/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=446&start=0
To my knowledge, only one poster, ?T.S?, has described sexual humiliation as a disciplinary tactic, where a teacher used forced nudity as a form of punishment, at ?Just discovered this! From ex pupil at Girls school?
T.S
I went to St James girls school for 10years from 1981-91. As with so many others this was utter hell which still haunts me daily?
We were all 11 years old. Fooling around between class a group of girls had tried to pull up my skirt and by accident it had torn. My form teacher dicovered the tear and as a punishment made me stand infront of the class in my underwear. Having just entered puberty this was horridly humiliating. She then made all the other girls take off their dresses too. It was an age where you hadnt got your first bra yet but were no longer flat chested- I remember other's tears.. But most of all I remember the harrowing pleas of a new girl who had severe burns on her skin and had always been careful to never reveal them. She begged to not remove her dress but the teacher forced her too anyway.
http://www.whyaretheydead.net:/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=2455&highlight=#2455