Rachel Johnson describes her schooldays at Ashdown House in her autobiography. It was an all boys school but her eccentric father persuaded the headmaster Clive Williams to take her and one other girl. She said despite feeling homesick she had great fun. Two girls in an all boys school – I can imagine! Her whole account of her time at the school is bizarre. It could only happen in Britain. This was mid seventies.

She describes how she was caught with a boy raiding a locked store room at midnight for sweets and sent to the headmaster for punishment. He told her to choose between a beating or missing out a weekend visit home. She chose the beating which she said was according to the offence either the slipper, cricket bat, or golf club. The headmaster refused to beat a girl and as a consequence all corporal punishment at the school was stopped thereafter. She was therefore she claims responsible for ending corporal punishment at the school by mistake.

I have heard of cricket bats being used but golf clubs?

Rachel Johnson has given at least two differing accounts of her Ashdown House experiences.  I daresay the original account is out there somewhere on the Web, but I am sure she related that she was slippered, whether in that dorm raid incident or on other occasions.  She then backtracked, perhaps because she was uncomfortable with the attention that her story attracted, perhaps because Ashdown House has been the subject of “abuse” stories and at least one court case.  The head Billy Williamson was legendary/notorious depending on your point of view, but other staff also used corporal punishment at Ashdown House.  It was par for the course in a 1970s boarding prep school.

pi0591 wrote: ↑

Jun 06, 2020

Rachel Johnson has given at least two differing accounts of her Ashdown House experiences.  I daresay the original account is out there somewhere on the Web, but I am sure she related that she was slippered, whether in that dorm raid incident or on other occasions.   She then backtracked, perhaps because she was uncomfortable with the attention that her story attracted, perhaps because Ashdown House has been the subject of “abuse” stories and at least one court case.

It was certainly the slipper in this May 2004 article by Rachel Johnson in ‘The Spectator’, though you’ll need to go to the very last line for this.  In the penultimate line she refers to the other more senior punitive implements deployed at the school as being a golf club and a Jokari bat rather than a cricket bat.  Jokari bats have featured here on various occasions and are those wooden bats rather bigger than table tennis bats and which in normal use have a ball attached to their centre by elastic cord.

But 7 years later, by the time of this May 2011 article in ‘The Telegraph’ Ms Johnson, rather than backtracking, has clearly decided it would be better to have been threatened with the cane rather than the slipper and so I chose the slipper with glee. had become So I said, “The cane, please, Sir.”   Who knows, perhaps at the time she was contemplating contributing to this estimable Forum and had observed the difficulties I was experiencing here due to never having been caned!    However she does go on to acknowledge the earlier reference to the slipper.

I now wonder if the rest of her story also had wings. Thought it was weird for mid 70’s.

I think we have to remember that journalists often write what they believe their readers want to read. To write of one’s own experiences 30 or 40 years ago are a fairly safe subject and are unlikely to influence anyone in either directions; for or against juvenile CP nowadays.

Thanks to the three above contributors for their thoughts.

I’ve no particular wish to kick a hornet’s nest, but there is dissimulation going on here, and possibly at a high level. Rachel Johnson did receive corporal punishment at Ashdown House, and it was not abolished as a result of her bold suffragette-like request to be slippered for the tuck shop raid. It continued after the retirement of Williamson, and it bridged right across the years when Rachel, her older brother Boris and her younger brother (who is also an MP) attended.  It applied to girls as well as boys.

Rachel possibly regrets her earlier public revelations but she cannot erase them.  The Establishment (and the Government and the party in power) could well do without revelations that the Johnson family attended a prep school where sexual abuse was rife.  They’d be happy for the story to go away; but ironically Rachel, with a weekly Daily Mail column to fill, could not resist the temptation of a colourful two-page spread, when Ashdown House – incidentally under totally different ownership in recent years – finally closed last month.

But the evidence is there – in a forensically detailed report which is not confidential but is buried fairly deep in the documentation of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse.  If you have time on your hands (and a fairly string stomach), your best route to it is to Google “IICSA INQ004624 report Ashdown House” .

The report makes clear that the regime was systemically infected with incidents of sexual abuse, and did not substantially change with the change of headmaster – around the time of Rachel’s arrival – but continued for some years. It’s worth adding that the Inquiry does not particularly concern itself with corporal punishment, in any of the schools investigated, other than the appalling activities of Derek Slade. Corporal punishment as such was fully legal at that time, and routinely (and not abusively) used in many schools in the private sector.  In that context, it’s even a little bit surprising that Rachel Johnson now seeks to distance herself. There are some who would wish to conflate CP with sexual abuse, but equally there are many of us who (having possibly experienced the former but not the latter!) have no problem in separating them.

A_L wrote:  “Jokari bats have featured here on various occasions and are those wooden bats rather bigger than table tennis bats and which in normal use have a ball attached to their centre by elastic cord.”

The Jokari bats I had were just very solid bats.  The ball on the elastic cord wasn’t attached to the bat but was a separate item affixed to a wooden block.  Inevitably, having a Jokari bat (really just a large “Ping-Pong” paddle), I couldn’t resist trying it as a spanking tool. I can vouch for the fact that it was very effective indeed!

Human memory is unreliable as are eye witnesses. There plenty of evidence that this is so. I have had recent experience of this when viewing old photos that contradicted deeply engrained memories.

Rachel Johnson may well have been mistaken the first time and may still not have things straight. We will probably never know.