Prue Leith called out nuns’ sexual abuse at top Gauteng school

‘My mother always used to say that you shouldn’t have nuns. She would say these are 40-year-old sancy young women who should be farmers’ wives, or you know, they should have a sex life and be normal.

‘Because if they’re not, if they’re locked up with a lot of teenage girls, they get up to stuff.’

Tradition

Describing how she spoke out, she continued: ‘There was a tradition in the school that the girls who were leaving had a meeting with the headmistress to tell her what they thought could be improved in the school.

‘So we all had this conversation about what we would say, and we all agreed that the most important thing to say was for the nuns to stop touching the girls.

‘How do you say this to your headteacher? Well, we were all sitting around this common room table discussing this, and they all look at me and say ‘Prue can do it, she’s not a prefect’.

‘So I had to. So we got to the moment when I started this little speech. And it was so difficult to do because she was the headteacher, her name was Sister Irene Benedict.

‘I said “Sister, the thing is, what we think would be most helpful is if you particularly, but all of the nuns, if they didn’t make the girls cry, make the younger girls cry, and then comfort them by rubbing them in the wrong places”

‘Because that’s what she’d do, she’d make the girls cry and then she’d comfort them.

‘It was this emotional thing of making little girls cry in order to….you know.

‘What was awful was the reaction – (that) made me see things from the other side. At that moment, and I’m in the middle of my speech, the Angelus went, the bells, six o’clock, so we all stood up.

‘And the most senior person in the room then says the ‘Hail Mary’. So we all stood up and expected her to say the ‘Hail Mary’. And she said nothing because she could not speak.

‘And I looked at her properly, because I’d been saying all this and not really looking at her, and I realised that she was blushing. Her whole face was absolutely purple and she couldn’t talk.

‘Anyhow, we sat down again and it wasn’t mentioned and that was the end of the meeting.

‘And then I thought “poor woman”. What outlet do they have? If you’re a 40-year-old healthy young woman, and there’s nobody to love, and no sex in your life.

‘And another thing I said in my speech to her, I said ‘we don’t like the way you stroke the dog, because she had this huge Great Dane which she did stroke rather intimately.’

Got a letter

Leith added that years after leaving she was asked to be one of many contributors to a South African book about boarding schools.

She added: ‘I wrote this story. I told them about this whole sexual thing.

‘Anyway I got a letter from the head of the old girls society of the school, who had been pestering me for years to give away the school prizes, or come and talk to the girls, or come and visit the school.

‘Anyhow, she wrote to me saying that I had let the side down, that I had betrayed my alma mater. They withdrew my membership of the Old Girls – whatever it was called – and I was not welcome back.

‘I remember writing to her “Do you realise this is 50 years ago, the nuns were very smartly, after I … they were withdrawn”.

‘They were English nuns and they were brought back to Wantage, which was their headquarters.

‘I said “this is 50 years ago, the nuns have been gone for 40 years, the school is a completely different entity, what on earth are you on about? Are you just saying that history mustn’t be written?”

‘Anyhow, they then got a new head teacher and now they still ask me to go.’

Leith made it clear that apart from the unwelcome sexual stroking she did not see ‘anything worse’, and she did not suggest it continued after she had left.

Who is Prue Leith?

Dame Prudence Margaret Leith, DBE, was born in Cape Town on 18 February 1940.

She is a South African restauranteur, television presenter/broadcaster, cookery writer and novelist and the Chancellor of Queen Margaret University in Edinburgh.

Leith was a judge on Great British Menu for 11, before joining The Great British Bake Off in March 2017, replacing Mary Berry when the television programme moved to Channel 4.