RICHARD Madeley has opened up about a devastating family secret. The 65-year-old told how he believes his father Christopher Holt Madeley was sexually abused as a teenager at boarding school.
Despite his dad never admitting what happened, Richard says he was left "f***ed up" and "broken" after being sent away from home at 15.
He claims it led his father to beat him, saying he was hit "five or six times a year" with a bamboo stick. Richard told The Sunday Times Magazine: "That went on until I was about nine or ten and he went a bit too far, hit me too many times, and my mother had a word and that was that. “I just want to put that in context.
I didn’t feel it was out of the ordinary — other boys got hit by their parents — but I didn’t like it. I wish it hadn’t happened. "My father was basically f***ed up by boarding school.
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