Iain Peters is a well-known climber. As a child, he suffered prolonged institutional brutality and sexual abuse. Unlike many other victims, he somehow managed to fight through to a better life. The Corridor tells his story.

Iain was born in 1948. Although he had twin elder sisters, unlike them he was 'the golden one'. A boy, from the right social class (grandfather a Rear Admiral, father the youngest officer in the British army). Such boys would grow up to become men who would rule the British Empire. They would rule it with discipline. 

Initially his childhood in Cornwall and Kenya was idyllic. He was largely left to his own devices, as were many children in the 1950s. His grandfather, Admiral Lawder, first ascensionist of the famous Devils Slide on Lundy, taught him to climb. He met mountaineering luminaries, such as Lord Hunt. He seems to have been very much a free spirit, alarmingly fearless. In Kenya, he was only too happy to make close acquaintance with such pets as puff adders, deadly scorpions and spitting cobras. Doubtless his parents were concerned. 

Concerns may also have been expressed about his friendship with Daniel, a young Kenyan servant lad, and his preference for Swahili over English. After all, Iain's father was in Kenya to help put down the deadly Mau Mau rebellion. Speaking native languages, getting over-friendly with the natives would likely have raised eyebrows in the expatriate community. 

And therein lies the rub. When you picked up an atlas in the 1950s, large swathes of territory were drawn in pink, signifying British rule. But this was to change, alarmingly quickly. The days of colonialism were coming to an end, as the French bitterly discovered at Bien Dien Phu. 

Yes, the French climbed Annapurna, the British Everest and Kanchenjunga, the Italians K2, the Germans Nanga Parbat. But really, the 'great nations' were just fooling themselves. The Yalta Conference had divided the world into two superpowers. Neither were European.

Ironically what Iain was instinctively doing was exactly what was needed: speaking other languages, understanding other cultures, living with empathy. But empathy wasn't a word much used in the 1950s. Iain's generation (and mine) was the last to have been significantly influenced by Victorian stoicism. Our grandparents were Victorians. Our parents and grandparents had grown up with two World Wars and a Depression. Most families had lost lives. (Admiral Lawder's son, Donald, had been killed in World War II, his body never recovered.) After so many lost lives, so much suffering, what was the point of talking about such things? Surely it would just rake up bad memories? No, far better to carry on with stoicism, discipline. Better to carry on administering discipline to an empire – even if that empire was falling apart. 

In 1957, when Iain was nine, he was sent home for a British education, to be inculcated with British values. He was enrolled at Upcott House, a boarding school in Devon. It was run by a friendly father and son combination, Mr Earle and 'Mr John', a keen mountaineer. Upcott House was 'very much a family home, where discipline was combined with academic success and enviable sporting facilities.'

Within minutes of joining the school, Iain discovered the reality of 'discipline' at Upcott House. The formerly affable headmaster, Mr Earle, viciously thrashed him. His crime? Climbing a cypress tree. Ironically tree climbing had been encouraged by his grandfather, the Admiral, at whose instigation he had been enrolled at Upcott. 

The thrashings continued. Brutality was then routinely practised at such boarding schools. Under the guise of 'discipline', it would supposedly make a man of you, a man fit to administer the British Empire. Generations were emotionally scarred for life. 

But worse – much worse – was to come. In the night, soft slippered steps could be heard in the corridor by the boys' dormitory. Nice 'Mister John' would come into the dormitory and pause by the side of one of his 'favourites'. He would then take the small boy from his bed and carry him down the corridor to his bedroom. There he would sexually abuse the boy. For four years, Iain was one of those boys who were abused. So was his childhood friend, Keith, who had already been thrashed and abused by his father, before he came to Upcott. 

Such abuse is more than a rape of the body. It is also a rape of the soul. The predator is a psychic vampire, encouraging the victim in supposed complicity. You secretly enjoyed it. It's our little secret. No one will ever know. You won't dare tell anyone. They probably wouldn't believe you anyway. But, even if they did, you would be revealed as the guilty party. Because you led me on. You secretly enjoyed it.

The Harvey Weinstein, Jimmy Savile and Mohamed Al-Fayed revelations, the Gisele Pèlicot affair… each time we recoil in horror. How can these things happen? There isn't one victim; there are dozens, sometimes more. There were probably dozens at Upcott House. And there were many similar institutions, up and down the country.

We say, "But somebody must have known." Lots of people know. At Upcott, people would have known. So why don't they speak up? They're frightened of the consequences. The Earles of this world are highly skilled at creating cultures of compliance. 

In 1961, towards the end of Iain's physical ordeal, Hannah Arendt covered the trial of Adolf Eichmann. She coined a phrase which has become her undying legacy: 'the banality of evil'. And it's desperately important. Because we think of evil as being somewhere else – 'then and there'. But often it's not 'then and there'. It can also be 'here and now', raised voices behind lace curtains or office partitions. We can pretend we didn't hear those raised voices. Or we can disregard them. Or we can do something. Doing something may involve us in embarrassment. It may result in our careers being terminated. Famously Edmund Burke observed that 'The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.' May I add a coda? If you do nothing, then your claim to be a good man (or woman) becomes null and void. 

As it happened, one brave pupil did tell his parents. They gave the Earles the option of closing the school down or facing a police investigation. The Earles wisely chose the former. Iain transferred to another school. Although there was no more sexual abuse, there was bullying, beatings and 'fagging' (boys being made to be servants to other boys). His parents divorced. By degrees, Iain came to understand that while his father was a charming, sympathetic and dashing army officer, he was also a feckless philanderer. 

At 17, after eight years of boarding school, Iain knew how to pass exams. Understandably however, his awful experiences had given him a profound distrust of institutions and authority. To his mother's dismay and his stepfather's disgust, he turned down a scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge. The umbilical cord with upper-middle class respectability was thereby severed. 

Iain's salvation was the Count House at Bosigran. The Admiral had been instrumental in negotiations for it to pass to the Climbers Club. It was an integral part of his childhood. Back then, it would have been a relative hovel, in stark contrast to the relative palace it is today. But back then, all climbing huts were basic. No matter. For those who loved them, they were sacred places. When life became too hard to bear, we fled to them. 

One evening after an altercation at The Gurnards Head Inn, Iain bade a hasty retreat. Many climbers have left pubs under similar circumstances. A few have also wandered across the tops of sea-cliffs, the worse for wear. But Iain is the only person I know who looked down and saw a magnificent corner. Hoping that it might prove to be the Cenotaph Corner of Cornwall, he climbed it. To his chagrin, Right Angle (HS 4b) went at Hard Severe. And yet it has proved to be one of the finest routes of its grade in Britain, probably giving as much satisfaction as Cenotaph Corner itself. 

For the first time in his life, Iain seemed to find his metier, teaching climbing to Royal Marines and the SAS. These guys were the real deal, far removed from the macho bullshit of public schools. After passing gruelling Royal Marine Selection, it must have been galling to fail through colour blindness. If he'd had gone to Cambridge, it's likely that he'd have been appalled by the snobbery and intellectual pretension. But the Royal Marines would almost certainly have been a band of brothers. 

Instead, in a bizarre twist of fate, he became a pot washer in a seedy strip club in Leeds. It was a brief, salutary episode. The conventional world had failed him. He quickly discovered that the seemingly freewheeling criminal underworld was far more violent. A rapid escape ensued. 'I took the bus to Ilkley, leaving behind two bags of possessions, unpaid rent and the dangerous world of crime bosses, police corruption, booze, drugs and sex.'

The only way Iain had managed to survive his sexual abuse was to blank it out. For years afterwards, denial, deception and blanking things out became default options. Fully confiding in anyone was impossible. Understandably, this made relationships fraught.

And yet the past reaches inexorably with its tentacles. A decade later, one evening he was accosted by 'a thin haggard stranger with a haunted look on his face'. With difficulty, he recognised his childhood friend and fellow victim, Keith. Shockingly, Keith attacked with a knife, screaming, "You bastard!" Managing to disarm him, the obvious question was, "Why?" And the chilling answer? "You survived." 

Almost another decade later, Iain met both Earles again. Earle Senior, once the terrifying headmaster administering brutal punishment had become, 'a pleasant, harmless old man with rheumy eyes behind thick glasses'. John Earle had married 'a friendly young woman' and was father to two children. The banality of evil… 

Later Iain and two friends went with John Earle to Tierra del Fuego to make a mountaineering film. Earle fell into a crevasse and Iain was placed in the bewildering situation of having his erstwhile tormentor at his mercy. Had he dropped Earle into the crevasse, it could never have been proven. But he didn't. Instead, for yet another decade, he made repeated attempts on Pico Roncagli, a nearby mountain. If he summited Roncagli, somehow Earle would be defeated. All he needed was a decent weather window – which never came. It seems that, in the end, he wandered across the line into obsession. On his last attempt, it was left to his partner to make the decision to bail. It undoubtedly saved their lives. 

For almost three decades, Iain had waged a deadly battle for psychological survival, the same battle that his friend Keith lost. Tierra del Fuego didn't give him the ultimate victory he wanted against Earle. However, he could finally see Earle for what he was: a worthless, hollow man. He abandoned the Sisyphean struggle with Roncagli, married, had three children, learned to lead a more conventional life. 

***

But of course, the memory of the abuse, too shameful to relate, was buried deep within his psyche. In his mid-sixties, it came out – with a vengeance. Almost disbelievingly, words went on to a page. On impulse, one day he walked into the police station at Exeter and handed over his piece of paper, watched a policewoman's face turn ashen. 

The long road to recovery finally began. Luckily, he found an excellent counsellor. Luckily, he was assigned an excellent policeman who doggedly pursued a crime which had happened more than half a century before. Surprisingly Earle owned up to his crimes; he also volunteered the name of an accomplice. Perhaps some part of him felt remorse. The courts came to their conclusion and Earle went to jail. 

The Corridor is a struggle for survival. Iain won. Yes, he is undoubtedly scarred by his ordeal and always will be. But he still won. Not only has he survived; he has thrived. Earle, the psychic vampire, never succeeded in stealing his soul. 

But although Iain won, there are untold thousands who have not won and may never win. Often their stories are locked deep in their psyches, too shameful to relate. Sometimes they try to relate them and are met with embarrassment or worse… disbelief. Go to court and it may turn out to be a horrible, humiliating ordeal in which their erstwhile predator is portrayed as the victim. Earle was presented as being 'otherwise of good character'. 

How did Iain manage to survive? His parents were not perfect - but they loved him. His grandparents loved him. The Admiral introduced him to climbing. Climbing was always there for him when he most needed it. Marriage has brought him stability and strength. So maybe the answer is simply… love. 

The front cover photograph, taken by his wife Ellen, shows a corridor. It is very different to the corridor of his childhood. This corridor goes from darkness to light. And this is the path we must follow – however hard it may be. 

The Corridor is a beautifully written account of a desperate struggle for survival. I urge you to read it.