UNITED KINGDOM
Norwich Evening News
Saturday, June 14, 2014
A Norwich man has written a book about his life-long struggle to overcome sexual and physical abuse he says he suffered at a Catholic-approved boarding school.
David Armstrong, 67, wrote the book ‘Out of the Shadows’ as closure for his own ordeal and to help other victims of abuse to speak out and reclaim their lives.
In the book he describes the beatings and sexual abuse he claims he suffered as a 13-year-old boy at the hands of Irish-born Catholic ‘Presentation Brothers’ at St Vincent’s school in Dartford, Kent – one of six such Irish-run institutions then in existence in the UK.
After he left the school, he ended up in borstal and eventually served a term in Broadmoor, where he met disgraced TV presenter Jimmy Savile.
Following release from Broadmoor, he began the long process of rehabilitation. And apart from a well-publicised blip when, as a gambling addict, he banned himself from every betting shop in East Anglia, he has triumphed over adversity and forgiven his abusers.
He said: “It took me 10 years to begin talking about my experiences at St Vincent’s. Writing this book has taken me over two years and is a final part of the long rehabilitation process.
“Edmund Burke said that, if good men stay silent, evil will prevail, which encapsulates the primary reason I am sharing my story publicly for the first time. In these pages I bare my soul.”
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