Top private school 'failed to protect pupils' from sexual and physical abuse

One of Scotland's top private schools failed to protect pupils from sexual and physical abuse, the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry has found.

The inquiry chair Lady Smith said from the 1950s until the end of the 1980s children at Fettes College in Edinburgh were regularly abused by both teachers and other pupils.

She named several members of staff who had been complicit in the abuse. They included ex-headmaster Anthony Chenevix-Trench, who she said had been employed at the school "despite having a problem with drink, and having a propensity to beat boys excessively" at his former school, Eton.

Fettes, whose ex-pupils include former prime minister Tony Blair, has previously apologised over the abuse.

"Children were wholly failed by the school. They could have been readily protected, and it is shameful that did not happen," Lady Smith said.

She said some victims were still suffering the effects of being targeted by Iain Wares, a former teacher at the school who is now the subject of extradition proceedings from South Africa.

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