“It’s not the end of the story but a real turning point,” said Giles Moffatt after 14 gruelling days of evidence detailing the physical, sexual and psychological abuse he and generations of boys endured at Edinburgh academy, one of Scotland’s most prestigious private schools.
Moffatt, 51, is co-founder of the survivors’ group of about 50 middle-aged men – including the broadcaster Nicky Campbell – who wept, embraced and applauded one another as they described hundreds of stomach-turning incidents of individual abuse to the long-running Scottish child abuse inquiry: a 14-year-old beaten “like a rag doll” until he passed out, eight-year-old boys locked in a garden shed over a weekend for a minor infraction, a six-year-old with a garden hose pushed into his anus as a punishment for bed wetting.
