Children at a private boarding school were let down by decades of “systemic failures” with housemasters free to rule their own “fiefdoms” without oversight, an inquiry has been told.

Between the 1950s and 1990s in particular, boarding pupils at Morrison’s Academy were exposed to people who could discipline them by “whatever means deemed allowable by that housemaster”, the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry heard today.

The inquiry has heard evidence of pupil-on-pupil sexual abuse as well as physical beatings and emotional torments endured by children at the school in Crieff, Perthshire, which was established in 1860 and was a boarding school until 2007.

Today, its current rector (headteacher) Gareth Warren repeated the school’s “genuine and heartfelt apology” and agreed there had been decades of “systemic failures” in safeguarding children.

He agreed with inquiry counsel Andrew Brown QC that between the 1950s and 1990s, across several different boarding houses, “there seemed to be fiefdoms in operation with, in effect, no oversight at all”.

Mr Warren, who is to become principal at George Heriot’s School in Edinburgh after six years at Morrison’s, said he recognised the “courage it has taken for applicants to come forward and give their evidence”.

He told the inquiry: “The very clear emerging theme right through is that the culture in certain boarding schools was one of delegation of duty to instil discipline and order in boarding houses by whatever means deemed allowable by that housemaster.”

He said that delegating discipline had been an “abdication of duties” by schools at the expense of the wellbeing of children.

“That manifested very much in physical abuse and underlying that was emotional abuse, having constant fear about what might happen next,” he said.

The inquiry has heard from former pupils of Morrison’s who recalled teachers taking “delight” in caning children and how one boy was beaten so severely his wrist was broken.

Alasdair Liddle, who joined Morrison’s in 1950, said he was tormented by a more senior pupil who threatened to brand him with a red-hot poker and stubbed out a cigarette on his bare skin.

Another, now in his seventies, said beatings endured from an “extremely violent” teacher “still disturb me” more than half a century later.

Yesterday, a former Morrison’s pupil told the inquiry how he was sexually abused by another student and beaten so frequently his “buttocks were always bruised”.

The man, who is now in his early sixties and gave evidence anonymously, said his experience at the school in the 1960s and 1970s left him with a drug habit and “feeling like a waste of space”.

He compared regular beatings by older pupils to the novel Lord of the Flies, saying “there were no boundaries…there was no oversight”.

Morrison’s Academy has apologised to all former pupils who suffered abuse, “whether that be physical, emotional or sexual”.

The witness told the inquiry he was first beaten by a prefect with a hard-soled slipper after failing to complete lines for running down a corridor.

He said that if boys tried to move during the punishments - typically carried out in a windowless room used for shoe cleaning known as the “black hole” - their heads would be held between the thighs of another older pupil to keep them still.

He said: “It hurt. The seniors appeared to enjoy meting out the punishments.

“The beatings were so frequent, to isolate them incident by incident is almost impossible.”

He added his “buttocks were always bruised” and there was “never enough time between beatings for the bruises to clear”.

The inquiry also heard he was molested by an “academically dull” teenage boy who had been held back and was in a classroom with children aged 10 or 11.

Andrew Brown QC asked if he told anyone about the sexual abuse, which the witness said happened every week for around four years.

He replied: “Not at all, there would have been consequences because to be labelled as a ‘poof’ would certainly have made me a target.

“This was something that could not get out. The fear was just ever-present and hyper-vigilance was part and parcel of managing that fear.”

He added he first smoked cannabis at 14 and kept using drugs regularly into his fifties to “blunt my emotions” and “escape my emotional self”.

He said: “I have no self-confidence…I very often feel like a waste of space.”

Another former pupil described in his witness statement wearing two pairs of sports shorts underneath his trousers to help cushion the blows of beatings.

A female boarding pupil in the 1960s and 1970s remembered her “cruel housemistress” who had “perfected how to deal mental and emotional blows to young girls most of whom had parents living abroad”.

She said in a witness statement: “She was extremely cruel, treated us with contempt and gave us no love in our formative years.

“It still haunts me to this day. I still find it difficult to return to Crieff as it invokes terrible memories.”

Another pupil, now in his sixties, said his housemaster was an “enthusiastic psychopath” who wielded a leather strap to administer beatings, and described the strap as his “pride and joy”.

“There were no limits to what one could be punished for…The man had a keen loathing for children and the emotional torment he put on his charges would put him in prison these days,” said the witness in his evidence statement read to the hearing.

The inquiry, before Lady Smith at Rosebery House in Edinburgh, continues next week.