Hughes's father paid for him to attend private schools "in the hope that they would be able to do something with him" due to his often violent behaviour, as he regularly lashed out at other pupils. When Hughes was rejected after just two terms by Lindisfarne College at Wynnstay, Wrexham, his father unsuccessfully offered to pay double the normal fees if they would keep him as a pupil. In 1975, aged ten, Hughes was sent to Bank Hall, a residential school for educationally subnormal children, in Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire. In 1979 he transferred to Woodlands private school in Deganwy, Wales. Despite his parents paying for extra private tuition Hughes failed to gain any qualifications. In 1981, when 16 years old, he took a seven-year-old boy into a derelict house where he "exposed himself and made indecent suggestions" before attempting to strangle his victim. The boy later recalled: "He picked me off the ground and threw me down, he was a very strong man. He wound up astride me with both hands around my neck." The boy pretended to be dead until Hughes left. Hughes was convicted of assaulting the boy, placed under a two-year mental health supervision order, and committed under the Mental Health Act to St Andrew's psychiatric hospital, Northampton, followed by Garth Angharad Hospital in Dolgellau, a facility for the treatment of mentally abnormal offenders. On release, Hughes returned to live with his mother, recently separated from his father, in Colwyn Bay, North Wales.