Too old for justice? The ongoing danger of Iain Wares

Iain Wares is not just an old man. He is a career sex offender who left behind decades of wreckage — boys beaten in the dark, assaulted in changing rooms, silenced by fear, and forced to carry his violence into their adult lives. Now 85 and walking freely along the coast of Fish Hoek, he is too often spoken about with pity. But his victims do not remember him as frail. They remember the bat he used to beat them. They remember the way he used his hands. They remember the silence he enforced.

From the 1960s to the early 2000s, Wares operated unchecked in elite boys’ schools across the UK and South Africa. At Edinburgh Academy and Fettes College, he didn’t only molest children — he struck them, humiliated them, manipulated them. One survivor recalls being dragged from bed in the middle of the night and violently assaulted. Another, broadcaster Nicky Campbell, described watching Wares masturbate a 10-year-old boy in the changing room while other children stood frozen. This wasn’t hidden. This was routine.

And it continued for years. When he returned to South Africa, he taught at Rondebosch Boys’ Prep until his retirement in 2006. His abuse was not impulsive — it was systematic. He created environments of fear and control where young boys felt they could tell no one. Even when he sought psychiatric help in 1967 for his “urges,” he was dismissed as merely struggling with alcoholism and allowed to continue teaching. He used that second chance not to recover — but to escalate.

In 2019, Wares admitted in an affidavit to abusing boys during his time in the UK. But when legal pressure mounted, he retracted it, changed his lawyers, and returned to the courtroom with a new denial

This is not the behaviour of a remorseful man. This is the calculated strategy of someone who has spent a lifetime evading consequences — first by hiding behind school walls, then by exploiting legal loopholes. And now, by leaning on his age as though it should excuse the brutal legacy he left behind.

Let’s be clear: Wares was not just sexually inappropriate — he was violently abusive. He didn’t just inappropriately touch children; he terrorised them. He weaponised fear. Survivors describe how he beat boys with wooden bats, sometimes waking them from sleep to do so. Others remember the psychological games he played: favouring some, humiliating others, ensuring no one would dare speak out. His abuse was not accidental. It was methodical. It was sadistic. It was sustained.

And yet, despite this, he remains free.

His extradition to the UK was approved in 2020. It was reaffirmed by the Western Cape High Court in 2024. A fourth consolidated warrant was submitted by the British High Commission in October 2024 to ensure he would face prosecution for the full scope of his crimes. But still — he has not been arrested. He has not been extradited. And the Department of Justice has offered no answers. 

Meanwhile, the men he brutalised are still living with the aftermath. Many have only begun speaking out in recent years. Some are still silent. Their trauma did not weaken with time — it matured. And while Wares spends his days quietly by the sea, his victims relive moments they’ve spent a lifetime trying to forget.

There is nothing frail about impunity. There is nothing harmless about a man who avoided justice by outlasting the system. Wares is not too old to face accountability — he is old because no one stopped him.

Now is the time to correct that. Arrest him. Extradite him. And finally — finally — show survivors that the law sees what was done to them, and refuses to let it go unanswered.

Iain Wares isn’t just an old man. He’s a career predator who beat boys with bats, masturbated in front of them in changing rooms, dragged them from their beds at night, and built entire classrooms around fear. He didn’t just abuse — he terrorised.

From elite UK schools to South African classrooms, Wares left behind shattered boys now grown into men still carrying his violence. He admitted to it in 2019 — then retracted, lawyered up, and played the system. He’s been hiding behind legal delays ever since.

South Africa approved his extradition in 2020. It was reaffirmed in 2024. A final consolidated warrant was sent in October 2024. Still, he walks free along the coast of Fish Hoek while his victims live with what he did.

He is not too old for justice. He is old because no one stopped him. It’s time to end the delay. Arrest him. Extradite him. The silence must end — not with pity, but with accountability.