By the time you read this, 51-year-old Giles Moffatt from Peasmarsh will have started climbing Everest to raise money for the NSPCC, the charity that helps vulnerable children. It’s a cause close his heart as the founder of a support group for fellow survivors of child abuse at Edinburgh Academy.
On Good Friday, Giles posed for photographs by the Ypres Tower in Rye. He is an unusual sight wearing a bright yellow padded thermal suit and the thickest boots and gloves, all to protect him from temperatures as low as minus sixty. Passers by comment that he is wrapped up well, then gasp in amazement when he explains where he is flying out to on Easter Saturday. It’s fair to say they are full of admiration as they wish him well for his Everest climb, but Giles Moffatt’s story is even more inspirational.
Alongside broadcaster Nicky Campbell and a hundred other men, he has helped bring the men responsible for the abuse he suffered as an eight-year-old to justice in recent weeks. He says he needs something positive after the last two years pursuing his abusers through the courts and a public inquiry. “I want to do something constructive and channel all those negative experiences into helping make sure an eight-year-old today never has the life I did at their age.”
Giles is being joined on his journey to the top of the world’s highest mountain by fellow members of the support group and a team of local sherpas. Together they are called Team Uprising. It will take two months to reach the summit, hopefully on June 3, after many weeks acclimatizing to the height and low oxygen. As an experienced mountaineer he is not daunted by travelling from Everest Base Camp through the “Death Zone” to the top. “The mountains really are my safe place. You don’t have time to think dark thoughts as it’s hard going and needs total concentration. It’s a challenge, but it’s also an escape from the memories of school.”
His training to carry all his equipment up the mountain has been unusual. He spent last summer carting grapes at the Chapel Down Vineyard in Small Hythe – sometimes as much as four tons of grapes a day. There have also been training climbs in the Scottish mountains. He has both local and national sponsors and has the support of local cricket teams as Giles is an umpire in Kent and Sussex.
Everest is the first of three challenges for Giles and the survivors group. Next year it’s a trek to the North Pole, with the third challenge yet to be decided. “Possibly the Amazon,” he says. “I want to raise as much money as possible for the NSPCC. They are the leading child protection charity responsible for changing so much. When I was at the school there was no help. No safeguarding. Nobody to turn to. The men responsible for the abuse could just get away with it as they did for many years. The NSPCC and Childline have changed that."
If you’d like to donate to the NSPCC to support Giles please click here. Rye News will be following his climb over the next two months with regular updates from Mount Everest.
Good luck Giles!
