British police investigate allegations of sexual abuse at Princess Diana’s brother’s school

London:

British police announced on Monday that an investigation had been launched into allegations made by Princess Diana’s younger brother that he committed sexual abuse at the boarding school he attended in the 1970s.

In his memoirs published earlier this year, Charles Spencer described the difficulties he experienced at Maidwell Hall School, including claims that he was sexually abused and beaten.

Police in Northamptonshire, central England, confirmed they had launched a criminal investigation into “allegations of non-recent sexual abuse” at the school Spencer attended from the age of eight to 13.

“This move comes after police launched a preliminary investigation earlier this year into allegations of abuse that allegedly took place at Maidwell Hall School in the 1970s,” Northamptonshire Police said in a statement. The investigation is still at an “early stage.”

In his memoirs “A Very Private School,” Spencer, now 60, reports that the sexual abuse and beatings at school left him with lifelong “demons.”

After the book was published in March, the school said it was “very sobering” to read about the experiences of Spencer and others at the time.

“We are sorry that they had to go through this experience. It is difficult to read about practices that were unfortunately sometimes considered normal and acceptable at the time,” it continued.

Spencer described being abused by an assistant head nurse at the school when he was 11 years old.

In the book’s foreword, he wrote that this chronicle of casual cruelty, sexual assault and other perversions from long ago was “at times an absolutely hellish experience.”

Spencer, a godson of the late Queen Elizabeth II, is the uncle of Princes William and Harry, both children of Diana and King Charles III.

The ninth Earl Spencer won worldwide acclaim for his emotional eulogy at Diana’s funeral in 1997, when his attack on the press for persecuting his sister sparked a wave of applause from the crowd watching outside Westminster Abbey.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)