For personal reasons he is not able to come on here and say this himself, so he has given me permission to do so on his behalf. I would have posted this a while ago, but we only met up recently. Still it’s better late than never, and I felt it was important to set the record straight.
Inquiry Report wrote:5.5.4 Use of the cane was restricted to the Headmaster alone. To begin with the use of the cane was unrecorded and unwitnessed. Later in Autumn 1979 a punishment book was instituted by Debenham and purports to record the boy's name, the offence, the date of the caning and the number of strokes. This was kept for the rest of Debenham’s time as Headmaster.
One boy said he had been beaten by Debenham on hundreds of occasions. The book gave the lie to this gross exaggeration.
5.5.5 The book does not cover the vital period prior to September 1979 when it seems that caning was probably at its height.
…And pertinent to this case, it was the period when Debenham administered these beatings on my former colleague.