6 h. ago ‘A supermarket for sexual predators’: abuse scandal at elite boarding school shakes France

Legal complaints filed by former pupils accuse priests and staff of physical or sexual abuse from 1957 to 2004When 14-year-old Pascal Gélie saw a brochure for an elite French Catholic boarding school boasting swimming in summer and skiing in winter, he begged his parents to send him. He had just watched the American school drama Dead Poets Society and was expecting “sport and friendship”.“On the first night, I realised I’d made a terrible mistake,” said Gélie, now a 51-year-old office-worker in Bordeaux. “There were 40 of us in a dormitory with decrepit mattresses. When I whispered to another boy for some toilet paper to take to the bathroom, the supervisor grabbed me by the face and pointed to the stone terrace outside. Someone told me to take my coat because you could be forced to stand outside for hours in the cold and damp. I was made to stand there all night.” Continue reading...

Events

2 d. ago Wall Street shivers over ‘hot commie summer’ after Mamdani’s success

New York’s financial elite compare the city to crime-riddled Gotham after democratic socialist bests Cuomo in Democratic mayoral primaryWhen Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old self-described socialist, won New York’s mayoral Democratic nomination last week over a seasoned but scandal-scarred veteran, the city’s financial elite had a meltdown.This was the start of “hot commie summer” in the city, New York hedgevfund billionaire Daniel Loeb posted to X. John Catsimatidis, billionaire CEO of grocery chain Gristedes and friend of Donald Trump, warned on Fox Business: “If the city of New York is going socialist, I will definitely close, or sell, or move.” Continue reading...

Politics

5 d. ago Denis Villeneuve to direct next James Bond film in major franchise shake

The Oscar-nominated director will take the reins of the iconic British spy series

Politics

5 d. ago Edinburgh boarding school 'protected abusers for six decades'

Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry chairwoman Lady Smith has published her findings on the provision of residential care at Merchiston Castle School.

Events

5 d. ago Edinburgh boarding school for boys ‘protected abusers’ for six decades, inquiry finds

Lady Smith said there was a ‘more or less continuous line of indecency’ from two named perpetrators at Edinburgh school.

Events

5 d. ago Boarding school ‘protected abusers’ for six decades, inquiry concludes

Lady Smith said there was a ‘more or less continuous line of indecency’ from two named perpetrators at Merchiston Castle School.

Events

1 week ago Boarding school gave me PTSD but I locked it away until my daughter started to board. Then it triggered a breakdown that saw me sectioned: DR CATHY WIELD

I had just dropped my daughter off at the Royal Ballet School, where she was to be a boarder. But the trauma of my own boarding experience brought the dread and horror flooding back to me.

Politics

1 week ago Predator, 66, who posed as an Uber driver and had a 'rape kit' with a balaclava and Viagra in his car is found guilty of kidnapping and sex crimes

Graham Head, 68, was found with a 'rape kit' consisting of latex gloves, condoms, Viagra tablets and a balaclava in his car when he was arrested in November 2022.

Events

1 week ago Monk who brought shame on Catholic boarding school jailed for abusing pupils

Michael James Callaghan, known as Father James, has been jailed for seven years for preying on the vulnerable teenage boys at Ampleforth College.

Events

2 w. ago The Last Journey review – Sweden’s Ant and Dec hit the road with octogenarian dad

In this moving and funny documentary, Swedish TV presenters Filip Hammar and Fredrik Wikingsson try to rekindle Filip’s father’s zest for life on a road trip to France‘Do you want to rot away in an old armchair?” asks Filip Hammar, a Swedish TV presenter, talking to his dad. In this charming, often hilarious documentary, Hammar takes 80-year-old Lars on a road trip to the south of France; the idea is to rekindle Lars’s spark, shake a bit of life back into him. Since retiring as a French teacher, Lars has been sitting around at home, steadily more depressed and frail. Hammar wants to show his dad that life is worth living. But as you’d expect from a documentary this heart-warming, Hammar has a lesson or two to learn himself.For the trip, Hammar has bought a knackered old Renault 4, the same car the family had when he was a kid. Their destination is the apartment they rented every summer holiday (judging from the old photos, this was pre-factor 50 sunscreen; everyone was a livid shade...

Events

2 w. ago Boarding school mass sex attack horror: How a mob of boys raped 71 girls in night of depravity with 19 victims killed in a stampede as they tried to escape their dormitory

Twilight was receding into night on July 13, 1991 when St. Kizito, a mixed boarding school in the Kenyan town of Meru, was plunged into darkness

Events

2 w. ago 'Abused, degraded, discarded': The predators who groomed and raped two vulnerable teenage girls

Seven men have been found guilty of a string of historic sexual offences against 'Girl A' and 'Girl B' following a five-month trial

Events

2 w. ago Air India crash LIVE: First feared victims of London Gatwick

Over 290 people are believed to have died in disaster, including a students at a medical school, with 53 British passengers on board the flight

Events

3 w. ago Candlestick killer 'posing on dating apps' after release from prison for murder of schoolboy

Art gallery owner Bennet von Vertes brutally killed Alex Morgan, who had a Scots father and once studied at King Charles’ former boarding school in Moray, with a candlestick in a Swiss villa in 2014.

Events

3 w. ago Princess Diana's brother Earl Spencer 'frustrated at pace of probe into claims he was abused at boarding school in the 1970s'

Grandmother Sally Jane Carr was arrested almost a year ago after a Mail on Sunday probe identified her as the matron Earl Spencer alleges he and other boys were molested by in the 1970s.

Politics

4 w. ago Business leader brings global expertise to prestigious Scottish school

Seasoned CEO appointed Chair of Board at Scotland’s only boys’ school

Politics

4 w. ago Formula One's humble hero: How McLaren star Oscar Piastri credits staying down to earth to his childhood sweetheart Lily Zneimer after pair met at boarding school

Since its conception, Formula 1 has been a hotbed for playboys, where daring racers dice with death and their latest model girlfriends look on from the sidelines.

Society

last month Shibboleth by Thomas Peermohamed Lambert review: A campus satire for the modern age

Welcome to Oxford University in the era of identity politics, where students discuss “lived experience”, acknowledge their “moral complicity” and pontificate about ways to enact “systemic change”. The spearheads of these discussions have names like Annunziata Rees-Mogg and went to boarding school, except they’re not Tories, they’re liberals with right-on opinions about decolonising the curriculum.

Politics