Earl Spencer says he and Diana were abused by nanny in latest reveal from bombshell memoir

16 March 2024, 19:02

Earl Spencer has revealed he and his siblings, including Princess Diana, were subjected to ‘painful’ punishments as children in the latest bombshell from his new memoir.

Speaking to the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg, the Earl told the presenter that he and his late sister were subjected to physical abuse by nannies.

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He said that Diana and he had their heads physically “cracked together” without their parents knowledge while they were in her care.

He added that “it really hurt”.

Earl Spencer continued: It wasn’t a tap on the wrist, it was a cracking crunch. I remember it still.

Despite the mistreatment, he insisted that his parents “did their best like 98 per cent of parents do” but that there was a “disconnect” between them and their children.

The Earl confirmed that Diana’s older sisters, though not the future princess, were given laxatives as punishment by another cruel nanny.

He recounted: “My parents couldn’t work out why they were constantly ill.”

Earl Spencer previously revealed details of sickening sexual abuse he was subjected to by a school matron at the age of 11.

In an extract from his memoir published exclusively in The Mail on Sunday last week, Earl Spencer, 59, described shocking sexual abuse and physical assaults he suffered at Maidwell Hall when he was a young boy.

He wrote that he was a victim of a “voracious paedophile” assistant matron at the school – as well as naming John Porch, the “sadistic” headteacher at the school brutally beat him and other students and seemed to gain sexual pleasure from it.

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The five-year ordeal led to Earl Spencer making himself deliberately sick to avoid the institution – a precursor to his sister Princess Diana battling bulimia.

The twice-divorced Earl Spencer wrote in his memoir that the emotional damage of the abuse likely impacted the demise of his first two marriages.

Maidwell Hall is where Earl Spencer attended between the ages of eight and 13 – and is just ten miles from the Spencer family seat of Althorp House where Diana is buried.

After his abuse, Earl Spencer recounted how he wanted “full sex from a too-early age” and lost his virginity to a Italian prostitute aged just 12.

Other revelations in the bombshell book excerpt included:

• The female paedophile matron emotionally manipulated him and that he self-harmed with a penknife when she seemed to be leaving the school.
• Latin master Henry Maude beat Spencer with the spikes of a cricket boot and knocked out another boy.
• Maude was visibly aroused after picking boys for naked swimming sessions.
• Spencer regularly considered shooting himself in the foot with his father’s shotguns when faced with returning to the school after holidays.
• He received therapy in his early forties which helped him understand the damage Maidwell caused him.