Child abuse victim of Jackanory presenter tells how climbing saved him | Mountaineering

A man who was sexually assaulted by a children’s television presenter has told how climbing and mountaineering saved his life and his “sanity” during the 50 years he kept the abuse secret.

Iain Peters, 77, who has waived his right to anonymity, was between the ages of nine and 13 when he was abused by John Earle on a weekly basis while working as a geography teacher and deputy headteacher at a now-closed boarding school in Okehampton, Devon.

The school closed soon after and Earle went on to present children’s television programs such as Treasure House and Tom Tom, and was the storyteller of the BBC’s flagship series Jackanory.

After Peters broke his silence in 2015 and reported the abuse to police, Earle, 87, admitted six counts of indecently assaulting a child and was sentenced to four years in prison in 2017.

The former tree surgeon turned commercial writer, who lives on the North Devon coast, has written a memoir, The Corridor, which tells how a lifetime of climbing and adventuring helped him manage the trauma he has endured since his childhood. In November the book won the prestigious Boardman Tasker award for mountain literature.

“I actually suffered from PTSD for 50-something years,” he said. “On the one hand, climbing can be a very dangerous activity. And in my case, I pushed the survival limits of climbing in many ways. I was doing a lot of crazy things in my younger days.

“It was almost a reaction to what had happened to me in terms of abuse and other things. Climbing saved my life in some ways. It saved my sanity.”

Peters said his favorite outdoor pursuit, introduced to him by his grandfather when he was three, has taken him all over the world, from the Alps to the Cordillera Darwin in Tierra del Fuego, on the border of Chile and Argentina.

“It allowed me to live this life, to reach the great old age that I have, and even in my late 70s, I am still a climber,” he said. “From a therapeutic standpoint, it helped. It helped me a lot, both in terms of living with the abuse and living with the consequences of the abuse… It became my survival technique.”

Peters said he believes climbing allowed him to “disengage.”

“When you’re focused on surviving halfway up a vertical rock face, you can’t think, ‘Oh my God, poor me, I got mugged when I was nine,'” he said.

The father and grandfather said the trauma still has a huge impact on his life choices, including his career as well as his relationships. He turned down a scholarship to Cambridge and at one point found himself working in a strip club for the infamous Kray twins.

“The problem with sexual abuse is that it’s all about power, and the rapist’s power is so great, psychologically and physically,” he said. “I was always afraid. I can see it now, but I always rejected success because success led to power, and power led to being like a rapist.”

He married his first wife, which lasted 28 years, before she eventually lost her husband to cancer. He remarried Ellen six years ago.

She had never shared her experience with anyone before reporting it to a police station in Exeter in 2015, handing over a “dirty piece of paper” describing the harassment she suffered over the counter.

He had previously denied anything had happened to him when reports of school abuse at Upcott House prep school emerged in the media.

When asked what she thought would happen to her if she didn’t climb in her life, she shared the experience of her best friend, who was also abused by Earle, often in front of each other.

“It never got better,” he said. “There was no climbing. He didn’t climb. He lost his mind. At one point he tried to kill me. He tried to stab me. ‘Why?’ I said. ‘Because you survived,’ he said.”

“I went through things like escalation, eventually having the ability to have children, to have a successful relationship, all of that happened. And in the end, you know, I’m an award-winning author, yeah, and a lot of victims don’t have that opportunity.”

Going forward, Peters hopes she and her book can serve as a guide for survivors of sexual abuse to know they can come forward with confidence.

“We need to create a social culture that makes people feel like they shouldn’t be ashamed, that they shouldn’t feel guilty, that they can ask for help, and that more people, especially young people, should have that opportunity.”