Richard Madeley opens up about being beaten by father who he suspects was sexually abused
‘Good Morning Britain’ presenter says he was hit when he was ‘quite small’
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Your support makes all the difference.Richard Madeley has opened up about the regular beatings he experienced as a child at the hands of his father, the journalist Christopher Holt Madeley.
The Good Morning Britain presenter, 65, said his father – who died aged 49 in 1977 – hit him until his mother “had a word”.
He said: “If I did something my dad deemed worthy of corporal punishment… probably about five or six times a year… he’d go to the shed. I can still hear the shed door scraping open – it filled me with fear.
“And he’d fetch a bamboo stick that he used to put runner beans on, and – not in a formal ‘bend over’ way – he would lay about me, four or five strokes, not at full strength but they hurt, from when I was quite small.”
Madeley told The Sunday Times Magazine: “That went on until I was about nine or 10 and he went a bit too far, hit me too many times, and my mother had a word and that was that.”
He said he “didn’t feel it was out of the ordinary” because other children were also hit by their parents, but added: “But I didn’t like it. I wish it hadn’t happened.”
Talking about his father’s own childhood, he said: “My father was basically f***ed up by boarding school. He was a very happy farmer’s boy, but when he was 15 my grandparents discovered he had the beginnings of a girlfriend, which they thought [was] the road to perdition, so they packed him off to this ghastly place.”
He said: “I have a strong suspicion he was sexually abused in some way. He never said that, but there were some pointers along the way.”
Madeley recently said he felt “ashamed” for hitting his children when they were young.
The broadcaster opened up about the subject on Good Morning Britain, while discussing a forthcoming law change that will make smacking children illegal in Wales. The law comes into effect from 21 March.
Madeley has two children with his wife and former Richard and Judy co-host Judy Finnigan: Jack, who is now 35, and Chloe, now 34.
“For full disclosure, when my children were growing up, I certainly never used a stick,” Madeley said.
“But once or twice, I think with Jack – he was the first born – I think I sort of tapped his bottom a couple of times with the flat of my hand,” he continued.
“Do you know what? I always thought that was a point of failure, my failure. I felt ashamed of it.”
If you have been raped or sexually assaulted, you can contact your nearest Rape Crisis organisation for specialist, independent and confidential support. For more information, visit their website here.
If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic abuse, you can call the 24-hour National Domestic Abuse Helpline, run by Refuge, on 0808 2000 247, or visit their website here.