In the news today a 15 year old Syrian boy, an asylum seeker, was pushed to the ground and had water poured in his face. The 16 year old boy accused of doing it has appeared in court.

When I was 13 I started my first term at Haileybury and Imperial Services College, along with two other boys. It was January, and the previous term’s September intake to my house was 14 boys. They were senior to us, and substantially outnumbered us.

So we had to do as they told us — with the proviso that the command was prefixed with the word “Guvnor!” All new boys at Haileybury were called Guvnor, because it was expected we eventually would go out and govern some province of India.

The greatest crime for a guvnor was fag-ending: which was listening, noticing or paying attention to something that wasn’t prefixed with the word “Guvnor!” If a boy came up to me with a big smile on his face and a box of chocolates and said invitingly “Would you like a chocolate?” I had to stare stonily ahead. If I said “Oh yes, please! Thank you very much!” I would be smacked in the face and kicked on the shins for fag-ending. The word “Guvnor!” had not been used.

“Guvnors! Polish the dorm table!” We polished the huge dormitory common room (DC) table till we could see our faces on it. “Guvnors! Take your shoes off!” We took our shoes off. “Guvnors! Get up on the table and run round!” The three of us climbed onto the table top and tried to run on the slick, highly polished surface.

A broom handle was shoved among us as we ran. If we tried to jump it we were immediately accused of fag-ending because no one had cried “Guvnor!” and the broom handle was hacked at our shins. If we ignored it of course we tripped and fell off the table to shouts of merriment, and were made to get back up and carry on running.

Once that entertainment palled, it was time for table tennis. The table tennis tables were propped up against an alcove in the DC. ‘Table tennis’ meant that we three new guvnors had to climb into the alcove sealed off by the table tennis tables and crouch down so we couldn’t be seen, or heard, as we were not allowed to talk or cry out. There wasn’t enough room for the three of us so two were on the ground and one crouched on top. We used to take it in turns.

Then the older boys would throw things at the wall. Balls of paper, pens (ours), books (ours), whatever came to hand. The most fun for them was burning coals. They would pluck embers off the open fire and lob them at the alcove wall. If we were unlucky they would burn our heads and hair; if we were lucky they would just singe our thick tweed jackets — the school uniform was grey trousers and a tweed jacket from Gorringes.

If something in our demeanour annoyed a DP (dormitory prefect) we would be frogmarched to the White City, the single toilet block for the entire school, which was over 300 yards away outside the quadrangle, upended with the head shoved down the lavatory pan and the loo flushed. A primitive form of waterboarding, I suppose. Just hearty young lads enjoying a bit of banter.

Hawker and Jeffs were a whole year above us, and they took particular delight in imposing themselves on the younger boys. Names have not been changed. Hawker would come up behind me and pin my arms to my sides while the grinning Jeffs would saunter round in front of me and fiddle with my little cock. I was totally impotent. There was nothing I could do except burn with humiliation. I wasn’t even supposed to notice, because I hadn’t been addressed as “Guvnor!”

None of this was recorded on social media. None of this was reported to masters. None of this was mentioned to parents. Whale, who came the same term at me but was in a different house, took refuge in the sanatorium until the matron accused him of malingering and kicked him out. He died shortly afterwards. Couch blew himself up with weedkiller in the summer hols.

The rest of us made it through OK, although the last I heard of Warden, one of my fellow students from the January intake, he was living in Antarctica.

None of our tormentors faced a court. What we went through was nothing compared with what that poor Syrian kid had to cope with in his home country. No one tried to shoot us or bomb us, although I have a suspicion that Couch might have had bigger plans.

But no one was punished or even reprimanded for the two terms of sustained abuse that we suffered. If a master happened to come into the DC while we were being table tennised, we were as silent as we were supposed to be. We were never discovered. Explaining the burns on my jacket to my mother was almost harder than the actual ordeal; of course I could never tell her what was actually going on. And my new jacket for the summer never got singed, because fires weren’t allowed in the summer.

There are gradations of cruelty. And there are levels of punishment appropriate to each one of them. But our society has become so layered and inflexible that an offence which should have resulted in a clip round the ear and a public dressing-down and humiliation is going to trudge its leaden way through our legal system.

The young bully will probably be lectured and sentenced by a shocked and disapproving Judge Hawker or Judge Jeffs QC.