“His sadism showed through. There was horrible, physical violence that included sexual attacks.”
A teacher branded Scotland’s Jimmy Savile racially abused a pupil while carrying out brutal attacks. Iain Wares faces dozens of charges, including rape, against 68 boys aged between eight and 13 from 1968-79 when he taught at Edinburgh Academy and Fettes College.
The pensioner, 86, is fighting a legal battle to halt his extradition from South Africa to Scotland to face the charges. Now, one of those alleged victims, Roy Hurhangee, 63, has bravely spoken out about the his ordeal while being taught by Wares.
He claims Wares muttered evil racial slurs while abusing him. He hopes to see him back in Scotland soon to face justice and hopes his age will be no barrier to serving jail time.
Roy, whose roots are Mauritian-Indian, said: “Abuse as a child never leaves you. It has had a massive impact on my life.” He was sent to Fettes by his father, a dentist and successful businessman, as his way of giving him the first-class education he never had.
But the effects of the horrendous abuse took a terrible toll on Roy. Wares singled him out for sexual and racist abuse. Roy said: “He was South African and they practised apartheid there. He would tell me to go back to the jungle and climb some trees as that was where I belonged.
“He asked me how an ape like my father could afford to send monkeys to a school like this, and that his children should not be at that school. We should all be up a tree eating bananas. We didn’t deserve the privilege.”
Recalling the abuse by Wares, Roy said it started when he was 10. He said: “His sadism showed through. There was horrible, physical violence that included sexual attacks.
“There is no history of baldness in my family but I have hardly any hair in places at the back of my head and I believe it’s because he used to rip the hair out of my head. The racist abuse was always there as well. He would never say it out loud, but he whispered in my ear.”
By the time he was 12, Roy could stand the abuse no more and begged his mother to take him out of the school, which she did. He never told her why he was so unhappy there.
He said: “The culture then was that you didn’t talk about these things, not even brother-to-brother, as I learned. I have never wanted to dwell on it, but it has always been there and has affected every part of my life.
“I married twice, once when I was 20, and then again nine years later. Neither marriage lasted long and I’ve lived alone since 1992. I believe my wives both left me because I couldn’t show love.
“I did love them and I could declare it, but I couldn’t show it, and I lost heart and gave up. That’s down to what I went through as a child and I still have the same problems so it’s better to live alone.
“I don’t want to hurt anyone else. As a child, of course I didn’t want to be touched intimately and it destroyed my ability to be intimate as an adult.”
Roy finally told his father about the abuse in 2009, seven years before his death. He said: “I couldn’t tell my mother as she died young but I felt I should tell my father.
“I’ll never forget the look on his face. He asked why I didn’t tell and I told him I believed he would have said it was a lame excuse for my poor performance.”
A former training officer at Aberdeen Airport, Roy met broadcaster Nicky Campbell, a former pupil at Edinburgh Academy at the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry. Campbell was abused at the school and has spoken movingly of his own quest for justice.
It was Campbell who declared Wares to be “Jimmy Savile Mark2” due to the large number of victims he abused and his ability to operate without punishment for decades. It was Nicky who encouraged Roy to tell his story and demand justice for Wares in the Scottish courts. Roy has also made a gruelling 12-hour statement to Police Scotland.
Justice campaigners are in South Africa for the extradition hearing and intend to see him sentenced for a case of abuse in South Africa. But they hope their last sight of him will be leaving the dock of a Scottish court in handcuffs.
Roy said: “Wares has had a massive impact on my life and the lives of countless others. Those who have come forward sound like a big number but they will be a tiny minority of his victims.
“If he goes to jail at 86, it will be tough and unpleasant but he should have gone to jail 50 years or more earlier, so he’s been allowed to live – his life and in a sense he’s got away with it. But many of us, and other survivors of historic sexual crimes will have more faith in justice if he is sent to jail.”
Wares is living in a comfortable retirement village near Cape Town, in his native South Africa. He remains on bail and is forbidden to leave the Cape Town area without police permission.
This article was originally shared with subscribers of the Daily Record in Scotland
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