Reviews tagging 'Sexual assault'

A Very Private School by Charles Spencer

12 reviews

squintyfarmer's review against another edition

dark sad medium-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Physical abuse, Sexual assault, and Sexual violence

Minor: Vomit

xxaprilmayxx's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense fast-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse and Sexual assault

frittata's review

dark sad medium-paced

4.0

The audiobook was heartbreaking to listen to. I'm grateful Charles Spencer interviewed and collected information from his peers, allowing their experiences to come to light. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Pedophilia, Sexual assault, and Abandonment

caidyn's review against another edition

emotional informative medium-paced

4.5

An emotional read on the trauma of British boarding schools and the abuse that ran rampant.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Pedophilia, and Sexual assault

essay23's review

dark emotional informative sad medium-paced

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Bullying, Child abuse, Emotional abuse, Fatphobia, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Rape, and Sexual assault

eliran's review against another edition

informative reflective sad medium-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Body shaming, Bullying, Child abuse, Emotional abuse, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Sexual assault, and Abandonment

Moderate: Fatphobia and Self harm

Minor: Death, Sexism, Toxic relationship, Car accident, and Gaslighting

itsgnat's review

dark informative medium-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body shaming, Bullying, Child abuse, Pedophilia, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, and Abandonment

Moderate: Panic attacks/disorders, Vomit, and Gaslighting

creativerunnings's review against another edition

slow-paced

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Ableism, Adult/minor relationship, Body horror, Body shaming, Bullying, Child abuse, Confinement, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Homophobia, Mental illness, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Rape, Self harm, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Blood, Grief, Abandonment, Sexual harassment, and Classism

knkoch's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional informative slow-paced

4.25

It's been a little while now since I finished this, but it keeps cropping up in my conversations. I had no idea before reading an article about this book's release that Charles Spencer was a historian; I merely recognized him as Princess Diana's brother. I was impressed by his writing style and they way he handled this sensitive, emotional material. He blended his own experience deftly with a considerable amount of research and a great breadth of interviews he conducted with peers and alumni from Maidwell school. This never felt like it was solely Spencer's story, but rather a consolidation of voices of several generations of men still suffering in various ways from the harm inflicted on them decades ago as children. (He decides early on to focus only on all-male boarding schools, which seems fair as far as scope seeing as that was his direct experience.)

Spencer really picked at a delicate paradox here, both acknowledging he and his peers' considerable class privilege and marveling at the entrenched English tradition of severe boarding school education, perhaps meant to "harden" those privileged children. The very families that could afford to educate their children any way they wished often chose to send them into the hands of 'educators' and staff they knew virtually nothing about, a situation primed for appalling abuse and subsequent cover-ups. Spencer tells his own story quite honestly, providing an account of his childhood understanding of events leavened with his now-adult perspective, which took many years and considerable therapy to reach. He's quite vulnerable throughout this account, without ever seeming self-pitying or arrogant. Though he does eviscerate the adults who failed him and his peers: staff, both teachers and administration, both abusers and knowing bystanders, all of whom could have tried to intervene. That seemed quite fair on his part. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Child abuse, Emotional abuse, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Sexual assault, and Toxic relationship

Moderate: Bullying

srm's review

dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

A moving memoir with additional indictment of the world of boarding schools. Excellently written, painful, and engaging. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Bullying, Child abuse, Pedophilia, Sexual assault, and Abandonment