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London:
British police said Monday that an investigation has been launched into claims by Princess Diana’s younger brother of sexual abuse at the boarding school he attended in the 1970s.
In a memoir released earlier this year, Charles Spencer opened up about the difficulties he faced at Maidwell Hall school, including claims he was sexually abused and beaten.
Police in Northamptonshire, central England, confirmed they had launched a criminal investigation into “allegations of non-recent sexual abuse” at the school, which Spencer attended from the ages of eight to 13.
“This move comes after police launched a preliminary investigation into allegations of abuse alleged to have occurred at Maidwell Hall School in the 1970s earlier this year,” Northamptonshire Police said in a statement, adding that the investigation was still ongoing was in the initial phase. stages”.
In the memoir, “A Very Private School,” Spencer, now 60, said sexual abuse and assault at school left him with lifelong “demons.”
The school said after the book came out in March that it was “very sobering” to read about the experiences of Spencer and others at the time.
“We are sorry that this was their experience. It is difficult to read about practices that were unfortunately sometimes thought to be normal and acceptable at the time,” it added.
Spencer described being abused at the age of 11 by a female assistant matron at school.
In the book’s foreword, he wrote that it had been “an absolutely hellish experience at times, this chronicle of casual cruelty, sexual assault and other perversions from long ago”.
Spencer is a godson of the late Queen Elizabeth II and is the uncle of Princes William and Harry, Diana’s two children with King Charles III.
The ninth Earl Spencer rose to worldwide fame for his emotional eulogy at Diana’s funeral in 1997, when his attack on the press for pursuing his sister caused a wave of applause from the crowd watching outside Westminster Abbey.
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