The events related occurred in the second half of 1971. I was in the Sixth Form at a prestigious Australian boarding school, and I was 15 years old. I had entered the school at an unusually young age as I was regarded as something of a prodigy, and despite my age had moved through the school at a normal rate. In this, my final year, I was both a prefect and Captain of my House - a position which gave the powerful to use the cane on other members of my House.
The world has changed in a lot of ways over the last thirty years or so - and I'm often rather surprised at many of the changes that have occurred in our views of various cultural and social issues.
And perhaps one of the biggest changes is in our attitudes to certain sexual matters.
A lot of younger people - those under 35, perhaps, seem to have a very odd idea in my view about the sexual mores of the 1960s and early 1970s. There's a perception that this was a time of free love, and unbridled sexual experience, but in reality for most people I don't think that was so at all.
And it certainly wasn't true for all of us. And it certainly was a long way from true for myself and the boys at my school.
We were very much in a single sex environment. 90% of our teachers were Masters - men. There were women on the domestic staff, and the matrons (nurses who cared for the boys - the school had a small medical centre which was the domain of the school matron, and each boarding house had its own matron as well) were quite a dominant presence in our lives, and we had some contact with the wives and daughters of Masters who lived on the school grounds (our relative isolation meant that the school had actually built housing for some staff over the years), but we really tried to ignore the presence of women as much as possible - even to the extent that despite the number of women who really were around, boys still swam naked in the schools pool, and in the lagoon that the school faced.
Because, I think, we were such a male environment, but also because of the prevailing cultural mores, the school was really quite an anti-sexual environment. We knew about sex - we had surprisingly good sex education in fact for the time - but we were encouraged not to think about it. It was something that was to come later.
And then we had the 'Three S's'. Crimes in the traditions and practices of the school.
Sodomy, Sexual Aberrations, and Self-Abuse.
These were three of the terrors of schoolboy life. Three of the ever present things we barely talked about, and knew we shouldn't have anything to do with. Three crimes, quite literally, that existed in our shared experiences and understandings of the school, and we were constantly, but quietly, warned against. And these were offences that, as a House Captain, I was expected to be aware of and to, in some circumstances, deal with them.
We were given very little instruction and advice about how to discharge our disciplinary duties - the Headmaster gave us a general indoctrination speech when we were appointed, but beyond that we were told very little about what we were supposed to do. But the three s's were an exception. The Deputy Headmaster, Mr Keanes, had summoned us all only a few days after the year started and told us how we should deal with these situations.
Sodomy was the worst - and in fact, was incredibly rare. I know of absolutely no cases when I was at the school, and I'm inclined to think that if it had happened, we'd have heard about it - there was virtually no privacy in the school's environment. The Captain of the School had a lock on the door of his private room. House Captains (as I was) had doors on our single rooms but no locks. Sixth form boys shared a room with one other - and might have had some opportunity for some sort of sexual activity between themselves - but again, there were no locks and the Housemaster and Matron never knocked before entering a bedroom - and any boy junior to that was in a dormitory with a number of others. Our showers were open plan rooms. The toilets had had doors on the cubicles installed for only a few years, and there were still no latches, and staff and prefects could and did push open a door at any time they wished.
But perhaps more significantly, we boys regarded sodomy with almost universal disgust - not because of its associations with homosexuality - homophobia was a presence in the school, but for the time (and remember it was still pretty much illegal) the general attitude was fairly enlightened - if two men loved each other, that was their business - it was the thought of the act that disturbed most of us, not what was behind it. So anyone who engaged in that was running a fair risk of being caught - and of being labeled in ways that they wouldn't have wanted to be labeled. So if it did happen, it was very rare indeed. As a House Captain, I was told that if I ever saw unambiguous evidence of sodomy (if I caught boys in the act, basically) I should report it immediately to my Housemaster, and never try to deal with it myself. If it was ambiguous at all, I should assume it had never happened.
'Sexual aberration' was more common - and I did detect a few instances of this in my year. This was the term we used to describe any form of sexual activity between boys except anal sex. Oral sex occasionally, more often mutual or group masturbation. It was understood that if I detected this, I was to deal with the boys concerned in a severe manner - but I should not report it unless it involved boys of different ages. Basically it was something that was viewed very seriously - but it was regarded as best if it never reached official ears.
'Self-abuse' was in many ways the most complicated, because I think attitudes towards had already substantially changed - but hadn't yet changed all the way. 'Self-abuse' was the official term used in the school for masturbation - which was also often referred to as onanism, and we received very mixed messages about it.
On the one hand it was a sin - and while the school wasn't incredibly religious, Christianity was still an assumed force in our lives. On the other hand, in our sexual education classes the mechanics involved were explained, and many of the myths about it were dispelled. The sports master still pushed the old 'it makes you weak' argument, but virtually everybody over 14 did it - and knew that everybody else did it.
The best way I can sum up the schools attitude was that while this wasn't something you should do often, and that you should resist doing it as much as you possibly could, it wasn't something you should feel excessively guilty about. Looking back at things, I think the school was caught on the horns of a dilemma at the time. Everybody pretty much accepted that this was normal - but nobody wanted to formally say that it was condoned.
We, the Captains, were told with this when we detected it - and we did - on a case by case basis using our own best judgment, and to handle as quickly as possible to avoid turning them into a bigger issue that they needed to be. I took the approach that if I could possibly pretend I hadn't seen it happen, I would do so. If that was impossible, it would depend on how the situation seemed to me - if it looked like someone just working really quickly to try and get it over and done with and out of the way, that was fine. If, on the other hand, it seemed to me organized and deliberate - if he had pictures, or if he seemed to be taken a long time about it - I'd probably give him a couple of strokes. That didn't happen often - four times in the year maybe - partly because I felt rather odd for caning a boy for something I did myself.
I'm giving all this background so the context of what happened in this account can be understood. I have had, at times, feelings of deep shame and regret about what happened - but that has always been lessened somehow when I remember the context - and without that context, what I did seems even worse.
It was early spring when it happened. During winter, there weren't that many problems in the House at night after lights out. It was too cold - people went to bed and stayed in bed. But as the weather warmed up a bit, the junior boys especially started to misbehave more and more - not serious things, but enough that we needed to sit on them hard.
Authority and control in our House ultimately came from the Housemaster, Mr Pinner. From my perspective Mr Pinner was an excellent Housemaster. He was extremely strict, but he knew it, and to avoid being a tyrant, he took a step back from the day to day discipline on the House, putting a great deal of trust in his House Captain. He'd back me up in a moment if I asked him to - and he would also have stepped in without my asking if needed. But generally he let me get on with things. He was a very austere man, but he was also capable of great humour and compassion when he felt it was needed. Alongside the Housemaster, was the Matron. Matron was a middle aged lady of Irish or Scots extraction, a nurse with an immense experience and understanding of boys. In some ways she was the opposite of Mr Pinner - openly compassionate (though rarely to the point of embarrassing boys), but where necessary capable of very controlled anger. There was Mrs Pinner, as well, who had no official position in the House hierarchy, but who supported her husband in running the House, and I suppose took on a role of unofficial aunt to the younger boys, especially. And then there was the House Captain - me in my final year. Even though I was only a boy, I was expected to maintain a considerable amount of the day to day control of discipline in the House. I was lucky enough that there were two other Prefects in my House, who assisted me. They didn't have the same disciplinary powers as I did, but were still very useful in terms of supervision and things like that.
So as spring began, I found myself, along with my two fellow prefects having to deal almost every night with some degree of misbehaviour in the junior dormitories - the first, second, and third form dormitories. In those forms, boys were in a single large dormitory that included everyone in their form in the House. It wasn't major misbehaviour - it was things like boys talking after lights out, or playing practical jokes on each other - didn't really require punishment as much as the threat of punishment if it continued.
Lights out was 9.30pm. For Fifth and Sixth Form boys, this was quite flexible, for junior boys it was very rigid. I wasn't in the House this particular evening - I'd had duties elsewhere in the school - and I'd left it to the other two Prefects to make sure the junior boys were in bed on time, with the lights out. Approaching the House around 10.30pm, I was annoyed when I saw that there lights on in the third form dormitory window. I couldn't see in, but I could see that half the rooms lights were on.
So I entered the House and walked to their dormitory to tell them to turn the lights out. And the door to the dormitory was shut.
This was unusual. Dormitory doors were generally shut only while boys were changing - and quite often not even then. They were virtually never shut at night except in the very coldest weather, because of the need to maintain supervision - opening a door at night risked waking the boys within. I was hardly stunned to find the door shut when they had their lights on, but technically speaking this was another rules violation and as I opened the door I was considering whether or not I needed to make an example of somebody.
What I saw as I opened the door didn't exactly shock me - I'd spent the last five and a half years in an all male boarding school environment - but it did surprise me. Standing almost in the middle of the room, between the wardrobes and the beds was a 14 year old boy with his pyjama trousers down on the floor at his feet, and his hand working away at his vital organs. All the other boys were still in bed watching him. Their heads turned to face me as the door opened - and so did he. Everybody looked fairly shocked.
I strode across the room, "Pull you pants up and come with me, Moran. Everybody else, lights out." I waited until he had pulled his pants up, and then grabbed him by the elbow lead him from the room, and took him to my small bedroom/study. I made him wait outside as I went in and retrieved my cane from the place I kept it hidden.
And then I called him in.
Alexander Moran was the son of a Labor parliamentarian - and this caused him some problems in our very conservative school. Worse, from my perspective, his father was quite active in the anti-Vietnam movement - and I was the son of a soldier who'd been killed in Vietnam. I had a deep ambivalence towards the anti-war movement, and I didn't much like Moran who was only a year younger than me.
I mention this because it is of some relevance - I don't think the fact I disliked Moran had much of an impact on what happened next at all - but perhaps if we'd been friends things might have been different.
I pulled out my desk chair and placed it in the middle of the room. "Bend over the back, Moran and grab the seat." I was trying to take the approach I'd been told to take in such situations. Punish severely but don't make a big deal of it. Get it over and done with as fast as possible and move away from it. I actually didn't like using the cane late at night - the sound of it echoed around the entire House - but I didn't want to delay in this case. I thought I'd give him three - six was my maximum (my 'top whack') but we were encouraged to reduce that in cases where a boy was being caned in his pyjamas - less protection than normal school trousers and underpants - and I also felt that it was likely he'd been one of many involved in this activity - my conception was that this was something the boys took it in turns to do, but even if that wasn't so, the other boys had been participating by watching and so it seemed unfair to punish him alone too severely.
"I didn't do anything wrong, Rysher!"
I wasn't going to take an argument - maybe he didn't think there was anything wrong with what he was doing, maybe I even agreed to a great extent - but it was still against the rules and he knew it was against the rules, and his entire dorm knew it was against the rules. I had to punish him, whether he'd really done anything or not.
"I said, bend over the chair."
"But I'm innocent!"
"Moran, do you want to take a note to the Headmaster saying you refused to accept a caning?" This was a serious threat. Everybody knew that the Headmaster would flog any boy sent to him with such a note - and because of that knowledge, it happened very rarely.
"Are you kidding?" He had begun to cry. "If I do that, he'll flog me, you know he will."
"Then bend over."
"I didn't do anything wrong, Rysher."
"Your choice - me or the Headmaster. You've got ten seconds."
"I'll take it from you, then."
"Right. Over."
He bent over the chair and I took careful aim at his bottom. I'd intended to go fairly easy on him, but that was now out of the window. I slammed the cane into his bottom with all the force I could muster. He was sobbing - an absolutely pitiful sound. When he'd bent over, I'd intended to give him six and forget about his lack of protection, but his tears and crying got to me. I stopped at four - but they were four good ones. When I'd finished, I walked back with him to his dormitory, and turned on the light as we went in.
"Get to bed, Alexander. The rest of you - you'd better hope I don't tell Mr Pinner - or maybe the Matron - what I saw earlier. Pleasant dreams."
I returned to my room and realised that unlike most of the times I caned a boy, I wasn't feeling shaky. I undressed and went to bed - and I'm afraid to say that if I'd come in on myself a few minutes later, I'd have to give myself a few strokes of a different kind. I went to sleep - sleeping the sleep of the just.
I was woken up at around 3am, by one of my fellow prefects. He was fully dressed and he told me to do the same.
"What's going on, Geoffrey?"
"Not in the House, Nathan. Mr Pinner wants you over at the health centre. I'll tell you on the way."
I dressed quickly and we both went out the front door.
"Now, what is going on, Geoff?"
"I got up about half an hour ago to get some water. I caught young Alex Moran trying to sneak out of the House."
"Running away?" It wasn't common - but it did happen occasionally.
"I don't think so. He was still in his pyjamas - and Nathan, he was carrying a rope."
"Oh, Jesus."
"He was hysterical."
We'd arrived at the Health Centre - virtually a small hospital set up to deal with serious health issues in the school, and went in.
In the waiting area were Mr and Mrs Pinner - both still in their nightclothes, wearing dressing gowns, and in fact seeing Mrs Pinner in a state of undress really drove home to me how serious this could be.
The Pinners approached me. "Nathan, you've heard?"
"Yes, Sir."
Mr Pinner spoke, "Look, Nathan, we haven't time to mess about. Matron says that Alex has been caned recently, and pretty severely. He says you did it, but he won't say why. What happened?"
I looked at Mrs Pinner. "It's a bit delicate, Sir."
"We haven't got time for delicacy."
"Onanism, Sir. I caught him playing with himself in front of the other boys in his dormitory."
"Right."
Mr Keanes, the Deputy Headmaster arrived as we were having this discussion, and he and Mr Pinner both headed into the inner sanctum of the health centre. I sat down in a chair with Geoffrey - and some time later, Mrs Pinner brought us both a cup of tea.
We sat there for some hours.
It was after six before Mr Keanes and Mr Pinner returned to talk to us.
"Well, you'll both be happy to know that Alex is probably going to be all right. His parents are coming down this afternoon to take him home for a while."
"Isn't that a bit extreme, Sir?" I was thinking in disciplinary terms - being sent home was a major disciplinary sanction.
"It's not a punishment - Nathan, I think we need to discuss what happened. Geoffrey - you'd better go back to the House."
Mr Keanes spoke. "Oh, and I've heard a rumour that Alexander was carrying a rope when he tried to run away. I don't want that rumour spreading, is that understood?"
I did understand, but I wanted confirmation. "Do his parents know about that rumour, Sir?"
"Yes, they do - and they don't want it spread either. Alex was running away. Now you can go Geoffrey - Pinner, you'd better go as well and see to your House. I'll talk to Nathan."
Mr Keanes took me into an office.
I was frightened of Mr Keanes, let's make no bones about it. As Deputy Headmaster, he was one of only two men in the school who had the power to flog boys. I'd never been flogged by him, although I had on two occasions experienced it at the hands of the Headmaster.
The Headmaster didn't scare me - at least not in the same way. When I'd done something wrong I was scared of him - with Mr Keanes, though, the fear was constant. The previous year he'd given me six of the best - and even though it wasn't a proper flogging, it had been pretty awful to experience.
Basically, with the Headmaster we all knew that while he'd do his duty, he used the cane with some reluctance. With Mr Keanes, we knew that there was no reluctance - he wasn't abusive or a sadist, he just viewed the cane as a routine measure.
At this stage of my schooling I wasn't actually sure if Mr Keanes could cane me or not. I knew that a Prefect could be caned by the Headmaster, his Housemaster or a Matron - but for some reason the status of the Deputy Headmaster was nebulous. Still, it was possible and so I had some rather serious concerns as we sat down.
"Right, Nathan. I need to know exactly what happened last night with Alex. Tell me, now."
"Well, Sir - I was coming back to the House at around half past ten and I saw that the lights were on in the third form dorm. I went up there to tell to put lights out and when I opened the door, Moran was standing in front of all the other boys abusing himself. I took him out, took him to my room and gave him four strokes. Then I took him back to bed."
"Did you ask him why he was masturbating?"
"No, Sir. I'm supposed to not make a big deal of it."
"Yes. Did he try to tell you what had happened?"
I hesitated. "Not exactly."
"How do you mean, not exactly?"
"Well, he said he hadn't done anything wrong - and he said he was innocent. Well, he wasn't. I'd seen him."
"Did he tell you he was being bullied?"
"No, Sir!"
"Did he have a chance to tell you he was being bullied?"
"I think so, Sir. Yes."
"You think so?"
"Well, Sir... am I in trouble, Sir?"
"You will be if you ask that again. Answer my questions."
"Sir - it never occurred to me to ask him. But he did have time to talk to me, and if he'd even said the word bully, I'd have listened."
"Well... Nathan, I want you to answer this honestly. Alex says that the other boys in his dormitory compelled him to masturbate in front of them - and that they've done it numerous times before, and they have also made him do other things. From your observations last night, does that make sense?"
The thought of it made me sick - and I also realised that for some reason tears were welling in my eyes. I blinked them back - Mr Keanes would not have been impressed. "Yes, Sir. It does make sense."
"Right."
"Sir, I'm sorry."
He shook his head. "Sorry doesn't work, son."
"Will I be punished?"
"No. I know you, Nathan. The problem isn't with you - you handled things the way I told you to. But, Nathan, you need to do something now?"
"Sir?"
"Put your House in order."
"Yes, Sir."
"And remember - Alex was running away. Nothing else."
"Yes, Sir."
I left the centre and I charged across to the House and to my room. I grabbed my cane and began to walk to the Third Form Dorm. Mr Pinner stood in my way.
"Moderation, Nathan."
"They don't deserve it."
"Nevertheless. Moderation."
"Three each?"
"Two."
"Yes, Sir."
I walked into the third form dormitory. The bell to rouse the boys from bed would be at seven, but quite a few were already awake.
"GET UP, ALL OF YOU! USE THE TOILET, WASH YOUR HANDS, BACK HERE IN TWO MINUTES!"
They leapt from their beds like scared rabbits and charged for the door. It might have been funny if I wasn't so angry. I strode up and down between their beds and the bookcases swishing my cane through the air. The boys who came back in looked scared - really scared.
"All of you, bend over the end of your beds, hands on the covers. No... any of you who are wearing undies under your pyjamas get them off and redress. And don't try and fake me."
Boys were not supposed to wear anything under their pyjamas - but quite a few did. It didn't really matter - it was a hygiene thing - but I wanted them to feel what I was going to do as much as I could.
I started caning the ones who were ready straight away. Two strokes each, every bit as hard as I knew how to make them. By the time I was halfway through the room, boys were crying even before I caned them.
When I was finished, I made them all face me.
"What you did to Alexander was disgusting. And what you let me do to him might even have been worse. What I've just done to you is not enough, not enough by half, for you, or for me. But it's all I can do."
"Now get to the showers."
After breakfast, I headed back to the medical centre. I have never felt so utterly miserable in my life since as I felt as I approached that building. I was horrified at what had been done to Alex, and utterly humiliated at what I'd done. I managed to beg my way in to see Alex. He was fully dressed and was sitting near a window.
"Hello Alex."
"Hello, Rysher." His voice was dead.
"Call me, Nathan, please."
"All right, Nathan."
"Alex, I've come to apologise to you. I am so sorry," I started crying as I said it, and tried to choke back the tears. "I'm sorry, I didn't listen. I'm sorry I caned you. I'm sorry I let what they were doing happen?"
"It's all right."
"It isn't. But I can't take it back."
"I know. Thank you, though, for coming."
I had to try and get through to him - so I tried telling him the best thing I thought I could. "Alex... it will get better. Everything does."
"Really?"
"Alex, when I started at this school, I'd just lost my mother and my father - and I thought the pain would never, ever go away. And it doesn't, actually. But it gets easier and you find new things."
"Well, maybe I'll be lucky then."
I wasn't a psychologist. I wasn't that wise. I was only a year older than him. I couldn't get through to him.
"All I can say is I am so sorry. And I thrashed them all."
He looked at me, "You did?"
"Caned the whole dorm."
Half a smile appeared on his face, and he said in a very quiet voice with just a trace of life, "Thank you. Oh, God, thank you."
I left well enough alone. I'd done all I could do.