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The Emotional Abuse of a Child at a Church of England School 

 

Pippa Rowe is a former headteacher of Bucklebury Church of England Primary School in West Berkshire, England. She is one of a group of people who emotionally abused a six year old child, causing the child to cry herself to sleep, wet her bed, and require psychotherapy twice during her childhood.  This is an account of Pippa Rowe’s role in that abuse.

A six year old girl at the school was receiving special attention because she had told her teacher that her parents were arguing in the home.

The child's father was asked for his opinion about the situation. He told Pippa Rowe and a social worker that he was protecting the child from the argumentative mother and that he needed help to stop the mother taking the child away from him.

The girl's mother had already taken her first child away from his father.

Pippa Rowe described the mother as 'an excellent mother', although it is not known what she based that opinion on.

Pippa Rowe became aware that the mother was going to take the child away from the father and she took no action to stop it. She did not warn the father that it was going to happen.

After the child was separated from her father, she became so distressed that she cried herself to sleep, wet her bed for the first time in her life, she started talking to her teddy bear saying how much she missed her father and she required psychotherapy. Four years later she went through a grieving process about losing her father, and a year after that she started self-harming and needed more psychotherapy.

Pippa Rowe refused to tell the girl’s father where the girl had been taken. The father explained that he was the one who was keeping the child happy, but still Pippa Rowe refused to tell him.

In an attempt to reasure his daughter that he still loved her, the father gave Pippa Rowe messages to pass on to the child via her new school, but Pippa Rowe gave them to the social worker who gave them to the mother.  It is not known whether they ever reached the child.

Given the severe and protracted psychological distress, there is no question that the girl will never completely recover from the harm she suffered due to the loss of her father. Most people would consider Pippa Rowe’s actions to be emotional child abuse.

It is not known why Pippa Rowe did such a harmful thing to a child, however, it is speculated that Ms Rowe was motiviated by her Christianity.  The mother of the child is a Christian, the father an atheist, and the child had shown signs of rejecting the religious teachings in the school - Pippa Rowe was aware of this and possibly wanted to limit the father’s role in the child’s upbringing.

 

 

 

The aftermath

 

Four years after the child lost her father she went through a grieving process and then developed signs of parental alienation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A year later there was a report of self-harm: