We have received several emails from a senior member of staff at Ratton School in Eastbourne demanding that we remove any reference to Pevensey Plungers from our previous article about the Pevensey Bay Paedophile, Nigel Eccles.
The Ratton School Teacher has stated:
- Our “sources are clearly inaccurate”
- She will be reporting “the article as a smear campaign to the police”
- The “facts are inaccurate”
- We “appear uninterested in facts, empathy, or nuance, which makes a mockery of your stated mission”
- We should “provide the statements and images you claim to have, I’m confident you will not be able to, because they simply do not exist”
- “The Plungers is an inclusive swim group built on community, support, and wellbeing”
- “You’ve used your platform not to seek truth, but to inflict harm”
- “I expect a full and public retraction”
We have written to Ratton enquiring as to why the teacher is making statements from a Ratton email address.
We did give Ratton School the option of reigning in their teacher, but they have not, and we received yet another email tonight.
We are a small team trying to do something good and do not have time to deal with Ratton School or any staff employed by them.
UPDATE 16.08.25
We have received a digital letter from Ratton wishing to clarify their position. We won’t publish all of it as that would be unprofessional, but here are the bullet points:
- The Trust would like to state unequivocally that we have no affiliation, association or involvement with Nigel Eccles or the Pevensey Plungers group referred to in your article.
- The teacher has acknowledged that the use of the school email account was an error and that there was no intention to imply any involvement or endorsement by the Trust.
They would also like their name to be removed completely, but that does not seem to be fair to our colleague, who spent a few days hounded by their staff member and experiencing significant anxiety over the interactions.
UPDATE 30.09.25
We have received an email from the lawyers of South Downs Learning Trust, who run Ratton School, demanding that we take down the Ratton School Teacher and Pevensey Plungers content and implying that just because a senior teacher emailed us from a Ratton School email account, that does not mean that it was from Ratton School?!
EDIT 30.09.25
We want to make it clear that the issue here is that someone from Ratton School emailed us with a Ratton School email address demanding that we take down the name “Pevensey Plungers”, which is a get-together group that goes into the Sea for exercise. Having heard that this group DID know about Nigel Eccles being arrested for indecent images and behaviour associated with child abuse, and believed him when he told them he was just a sex addict, and then allowed him to further attend the group and socialise with vulnerable adults and children, we are not at all happy and decided to report this on our site.
This has nothing to do with Ratton School as a whole, other than the teacher who contacted us works there and used their email address to contact us. And we have had no apology from Ratton School or South Downs Learning Trust.
Now it has got out of hand, and the principle of the situation is that we are wasting time on that which could be used to further work on our site and FB Page.
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