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Diana's brother Earl Spencer reveals shocking sexual abuse and beatings at £32k a year private school in new memoir
9 March 2024, 19:42 | Updated: 9 March 2024, 19:46
Princess Diana's brother Earl Spencer has revealed details of sickening sexual abuse he was subjected to by a school matron at the age of 11.
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In an extract from his memoir published exclusively in The Mail on Sunday, Earl Spencer, 59, described shocking sexual abuse and physical assaults he suffered at Maidwell Hall when he was a young boy.
He wrote that he was a victim of a "voracious paedophile" assistant matron at the school - as well as naming John Porch, the "sadistic" headteacher at the school brutally beat him and other students and seemed to gain sexual pleasure from it.
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The five-year ordeal led to Earl Spencer making himself deliberately sick to avoid the institution - a precursor to his sister Princess Diana battling bulimia.
The twice-divorced Earl Spencer wrote in his memoir that the emotional damage of the abuse likely impacted the demise of his first two marriages.
Maidwell Hall is where Earl Spencer attended between the ages of eight and 13 - and is just ten miles from the Spencer family seat of Althorp House where Diana is buried.
After his abuse, Earl Spencer recounted how he wanted "full sex from a too-early age" and lost his virginity to a Italian prostitute aged just 12.
Other revelations in the bombshell book excerpt include:
- The female paedophile matron emotionally manipulated him and that he self-harmed with a penknife when she seemed to be leaving the school.
- Latin master Henry Maude beat Spencer with the spikes of a cricket boot and knocked out another boy.
- Maude was visibly aroused after picking boys for naked swimming sessions.
- Spencer regularly considered shooting himself in the foot with his father's shotguns when faced with returning to the school after holidays.
- He received therapy in his early forties which helped him understand the damage Maidwell caused him.