Thanks for reading. I also found it incomprehensible as a kid.

More recently, I've read a lot of the literature about perpetrator dynamics and there seems to be an explanation:

People repeat traumatic behaviours, including abuse of children, because they have repressed their own memory of how painful it was to experience childhood abuse. Then, they express their pain, and 'tell their story', by acting it out as an adult, and forcing another child to feel and express all their disowned emotions. There's an interesting, but harrowing, book on this subject called: 'Dialogues With Forgotten Voices' by Harvey L Schwartz.

But, although I now understand the psychodynamics of it, I personally cannot understand how they did not see the pain they were causing me. The abusers were facilitated by the fact that British society tacitly endorses child-abuse in many forms to this day.

Thanks for the warm welcome to Steemit :)