Brian Woods
Production support
Chosen is testament to the power of a compelling story, simply told. It deals with a subject often whispered but rarely spoken about - the sexual abuse of schoolboys by teachers in Britain's private schools.
Long Synopsis
Tom, Mark and Alastair all went to the very best school money could buy. At eight years of age they were sent as boarders to a prep school in the countryside outside London that prepared boys for Eton, Harrow, Oxford, Cambridge and life. What their parents didn't suspect, was that several of the teachers on the staff were career paedophiles, who would ruthlessly use the position of power and influence they held in the lives of the children in their charge to sexually exploit them in the most extreme and degrading way.
For thirty years the boys, and the men they became, stayed silent, nursing the dark secret of the abuse they suffered. In this film they break that silence with spellbinding articulacy, and breath-taking honesty. Looking back over the decades, they analyse the consummate skill with which their abusers groomed them - separating them from their parents' affections, and ensuring that they had no choice but to become complicit in the terrible acts they were led to believe they had to commit.