The Teacher Who Broke the Rules: An Upsetting Story of Child Abuse, Manipulation and Blackmail

By Deborah Dennison

Debbie is a sensitive little girl. Roped into going to school camp at the last moment, she isn't much looking forward to her week away.

Mr Holt is everyone's favourite teacher. Such a funny, jolly man. Everyone loves him. He's everyone's best friend. Even the other teachers look up to him

But this apparently kind man hides a shocking secret. He will prey on little Debbie in the vilest way, and control her through threat, manipulation and blackmail.

Debbie never wanted to go to school camp. But she has no idea of the hell that is awaiting her on this school trip.

When Mr Holt turns his attentions to another girl, Debbie is left with a dilemma – can she find the strength to report the crime?

WARNING: This book is based upon a true account of child abuse, and as such contains passages that some readers may find disturbing.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Deborah Dennison
• Release date: Dec 7, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386818243

Book preview

Chapter 1

I WASN’T EVEN SUPPOSED to be there. My name wasn’t even down to go to camp. I shouldn’t have happened to me. It shouldn’t have happened at all.

Our school, Grant Manor, was a private school. But I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. Please don’t imagine it was all full of posh rich kids. Don’t think I’m some stuck up snobby girl. It wasn’t like that at all. Our school wasn’t like Eton or Harrow. It was just in a big converted house. It was quite tatty and the school fees were probably the cheapest of any private school in Britain. No one with lots of money would choose to send their children to our school. There was a posh girls’ school nearby, St Bernadette’s. That’s where the properly rich people’s children went. Our school was just full of kids whose parents didn’t want them to go to Blaze Hill.

Blaze Hill was the only state primary in our town. It was so rough it had a reputation all over the county. I was a ‘delicate’ child and Mum and Dad used to say I’d be eaten alive at Blaze Hill. It even got closed down at one point because it failed all the government tests and checks. All the Blaze Hill parents were in a tizzy because the only other school was miles away and all their children suddenly had to start getting up really early and taking a long bus ride to the next town.

Mum and Dad weren’t even well off. Mum had to take on two part-time jobs to send me to that little school. They always struggled every term to pay the fees and I wore a second-hand uniform, inherited from the daughter of one of Mum’s friends. And when the time came for secondary school, I was to attend the normal comprehensive with everyone else. No, I wasn’t posh or rich. I was just from a normal family who worked hard to protect their only daughter from having a bad experience at school.

They tried so hard to make sure my school years were good ones. Sadly, their choice to send me to Grant Manor rather than Blaze Hill only ended up putting me in the most unimaginable danger. There have been so many times I wished I had gone to Blaze Hill after all. Perhaps I would have been bullied, perhaps I would have been beaten up, but nothing could have been worse than what was to come at Grant Manor.

It was the third year of primary school and almost time for Cranley Camp. (Everyone now says ‘year 6’ but we just used to call it ‘the third year.’) Cranley Camp was a school residential trip that happened every year for the third years. Although, to be honest, it wasn’t really a camp because there was no actual camping involved.

Cranley Camp was held at a sort of school activity centre near the coast. The children didn’t stay in tents, they stayed in bunk beds in dormitories. And cooking was done in a proper kitchen. Perhaps ‘outdoor activity week’ would be a better way to describe what Cranley Camp was. Everyone knew about it throughout the whole school. We learned of Cranley Camp in the infants, even though only third years got to attend. It was part of the school’s calendar, part of its history, part of its culture.

Each year, after camp had ended and everyone was back at school, there would be a long morning assembly put on by that year’s participants. They would all bore the rest of the school with tales of their oh-so-funny antics at the camp just gone by. There would always be a slide show and each child would stand and regale us with ‘their favourite memory’ from the weekend – whatever they found the most fun or exciting. Although none of it ever looked remotely fun or exciting to me.

There was a noticeboard close to the entrance to the school dedicated just to photos of the previous year’s attendees, shouting and laughing as they slid on rope slides, or splashed around in the seawater of the camp’s little port, canoeing or just swimming. And this was probably the main reason that I never chose to go to camp. I hated water, I was a terrible swimmer and had a severe fear of being out of my depth, of water going over my head.

I would watch other children at the beach or at swimming pools, jumping into deep water, throwing each other around, plunging beneath the surface, and I wondered how they did it. For me, the terror in such an action was just too great, and the panic I felt at water going over my head was enough to render me incapable of sensible thought or movement. The fact was, if someone had thrown me headfirst into deep water, I probably would have drowned through sheer panic.

Water wasn’t the only thing I was afraid of at that age. I was also petrified of heights, and I knew from those boring assemblies that probably the most popular favourite activity at Cranley Camp was whizzing down the death slide in the middle of the woods. This was a wire suspended at one end, fifty feet above the ground. The other end was attached to a post down towards the ground. This contraption, that held so much joy for other children, looked to me like something from hell. There is no way I could have coped with that death slide. I’d either have to experience the terror of the slide itself, or otherwise subject myself to the ridicule from other children when I refused to join in.

So no, the week at Cranley Camp had never held any attraction for me whatsoever. To be honest, it didn’t even register in my mind that I ever would attend. So, when the letter went around that year, asking parents to sign a consent form and enclose a five-pound deposit, I’m not sure if I even bothered to show the letter to my parents. After all, the letter didn’t seem at all relevant to me. Cranley Camp was something other children attended, those strong, sporty, outdoor-type of kids.

Yes, it’s true. You have probably guessed by now that I was an oversensitive child, even for a girl. I was a weakling. A softy. A cissy. I was afraid of everything, prone to crying and dark serious moods. I was clever girl, a bit of a teacher’s pet, who preferred reading in a corner to playing outside with