A former student at one of Scotland’s most prestigious boarding schools has branded it ‘worse than Lord of the Flies’ after years of suffering horrific abuse.
Angus Bell said students practiced “daily cruelty, sadism and violence” on their classmates at Loretto School in the 1990s.
He became a key whistleblower at the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry (SCAI) seven years ago, raising the alarm about the culture of abuse at the school in Musselburgh, East Lothian, where fees for seniors are around £51,000 a year.
Alumni include ex-chancellors Alistair Darling and Norman Lamont, presenter Andrew Marr, F1 legend Jim Clark and ex-nationalist MSP Fergus Ewing.
During Bell’s time at Loretto, from ages ten to eighteen, Bell said older boys “ran it in all but name, exposing children to daily acts of physical, psychological and sexual abuse.”
He said that in elementary school, phone calls and visits were prohibited. Bell, 45, who said Loretto never contacted him to apologise, told the Mail: ‘We lived in this madhouse.
“It was worse than Lord of the Flies, and people broke down.”
He said the school was a “prison” and that the students were “training as child soldiers for an empire that no longer exists.”
Angus Bell faced ‘daily cruelty, sadism and violence’ while attending Loretto School in the 1990s
Loretto School alumni include ex-chancellors Alistair Darling and Norman Lamont, broadcaster Andrew Marr, F1 legend Jim Clark and ex-nationalist MSP Fergus Ewing
He added, “Your goal in the first two years of that high school was literally to survive the endless beatings. You had two jobs: getting beat up and being slaves to the older students.”
He said they developed torture practices, locking younger boys in suitcases and launching them downstairs, hanging them in duvet covers from third-floor windows, waterboarding them in toilets and beating them with hockey sticks and cricket bats.
Dormitories turned into “fight clubs” and children were set on fire, held at gunpoint with ball-bearing guns and shot, kidnapped from bed in the middle of the night on birthdays and pushed into cold baths or tied naked to trees.
Children were subjected to an exhausting 90-hour work week and corporal punishment inflicted by prefects before dawn, often requiring them to push themselves up in the sea until they vomited.
Mr Bell, a father of three, launched a landmark lawsuit against the school and became the first person to successfully claim damages.
After more than four years of legal action, he accepted a six-figure settlement just weeks before the trial, and is now free to speak out.
SCAI chairman Lady Smith found that children were being abused while in Loretto’s care and criticized the failure in supervision.
Mr Bell said pedophiles had been active for decades and received glowing referrals to work elsewhere.
Mr Bell, who now lives in Canada, is coming to Britain for the launch of his book, The Lost Boys
He said he was “attacked thousands of times in two thousand days, hospitalized for the attacks and thrown downstairs.”
Mr Bell said: “I saw people being set on fire; I saw people locked in suitcases and pushed downstairs.
‘I was tied up in duvet covers, beaten with hockey sticks and threatened by being hung from the third floor windows.
‘People were hung by their ankles from the windows on the third floor.
“We were held at gunpoint with a ball-bearing rifle for an hour until someone was shot in the face.”
As a result of his time at school, Mr Bell has suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety disorder and depressive disorder for over thirty years. He now lives in Canada with his wife Candy and three sons aged 12, 15 and 17, after retraining as a carpenter.
He comes to Britain for the launch of his book, The Lost Boys, to coincide with Loretto’s 200th birthday.
Headteacher Pete Richardson said: ‘Loretto recognizes the suffering caused by the historical abuse at the school and is committed to learning from the past to create a safe, supportive learning environment where the wellbeing of students is the highest priority.
“Loretto continues to support the work of the SCAI and has apologized unreservedly for past wrongdoing. Our condolences go out to all victims of abuse.”
The Lost Boys by Angus Bell, published by Darius Publishing, is available on Amazon for £9.99.
