Inquiry says Ampleforth and Downside put own reputations before protection of children

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

The true scale of sexual abuse at two of the UK’s leading Catholic independent schools over a period of 40 years is likely to have been far greater than has been proved in the courts, a report by the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse has concluded.

Ten people have been convicted or cautioned in relation to sexual offences at Ampleforth in North Yorkshire and Downside in Somerset. The schools “prioritised the monks and their own reputations over the protection of children … in order to avoid scandal”, says the 211-page report published by IICSA on Thursday after hearings last year.

The monks avoided giving information to or cooperating with statutory authorities investigating abuse, it says. Their approach could be summarised as “a ‘tell them nothing’ attitude”.

The report says: “Appalling sexual abuse [was] inflicted over decades on children as young as seven at Ampleforth school and 11 at Downside school.”

The inquiry heard that boys were made to strip naked and were beaten. Some were allegedly forced to give and receive oral sex, both privately and in front of other pupils. Alleged abuse included digital penetration of the anus and children being compelled to perform sex acts on each other.

Physical abuse had sadistic and sexual overtones, the report says. One survivor described his abuser at Ampleforth as “an out-and-out sadist”.

A victim of Fr Piers Grant-Ferris, who was convicted in 2006 of assaulting 15 boys, described being forced to straddle a bath naked as the monk beat him while masturbating. It was “absolutely terrifying”, he told the inquiry.

“Many perpetrators did not hide their sexual interests from the children. The blatant openness of these activities demonstrates there was a culture of acceptance of abusive behaviour,” the report says.

Ten people, mostly monks, connected to the two schools have been convicted or cautioned in relation to offences involving sexual activity with a large number of children, or pornography.

Ampleforth and Downside are schools attached to abbeys of the English Benedictine Congregation, and are regarded as leading Catholic independent schools.

Monks at both institutions were “very often secretive, evasive and suspicious of anyone outside the English Benedictine Congregation,” the report says.

In 2001 the Nolan report made recommendations on the safeguarding of children in the Catholic church, including that incidents or allegations of sexual abuse should be referred to the statutory authorities.

Both schools “seemed to take a view that [the report’s] implementation was neither obligatory nor desirable. This failure to comply appeared to go unchallenged by the Catholic church,” the IICSA report says. “At Ampleforth and Downside, a number of allegations were never referred to the police but were handled internally.”

It says an abbot of Ampleforth between 1997 and 2005, Timothy Wright, “clung to outdated beliefs about ‘paedophilia’ and had an immovable attitude of always knowing best”.

Abbots at both schools would confine suspected perpetrators to the abbey or transfer them elsewhere. Records were destroyed by both schools, the report says. One former headmaster of Downside “made several trips with a wheelbarrow with files to the edge of the estate and made a bonfire of them”.

During the inquiry’s hearings, senior clergymen in the English Benedictine Congregation expressed regret for past failures to protect children. However, this was “not accompanied by full acknowledgement of the tolerance of serious criminal activity, or the recognition that previous ‘misjudgment’ had devastating consequences for the lives of the young people involved.”

The report recommends a strict separation between the governance of the two abbeys and the schools.

It acknowledges that some steps have been taken but says neither school has formally established a comprehensive redress system and no public apology has been made.

In April the Charities Commission stripped the charitable bodies that run Ampleforth of their safeguarding oversight and appointed an interim manager.

IICSA said it could draw no conclusions over an allegation that Michael Gove, while he was education secretary, intervened in a sexual abuse investigation at Downside.

Claire Winter, the deputy director of children’s services responsible for children’s social care at Somerset county council, told the inquiry she received two calls from Gove and his office asking for information about the investigation into a priest suspected of abuse at the school in 2010. Her evidence was backed up by another safeguarding official, Jane Dziadulewicz.

After questions from the inquiry, Gove said he had not personally made any phone calls and he had no interest in the investigation. He said there was no record of any calls being made from his offices.

Winter provided another statement to the inquiry standing by her evidence. IICSA said: “We take the view that there is insufficient evidence on this point from which to draw any conclusions.”

Richard Scorer, a lawyer from Slater and Gordon who represented several victims from Ampleforth and Downside at the inquiry, said: “This familiar and shameful story of cover-up has been told time and time again and is a devastating indictment of an organisation guilty of gross failures on child protection.”

Responding to the report, one survivor said: “I trusted [the church] to help but instead my life was destroyed and I was handed a life sentence of suffering by my abuser and those who failed to act against it.”

Peter Garsden, president of the Association of Child Abuse Lawyers, said the report’s findings were “damning, both in terms of the failure of the Roman Catholic church to protect children from the abuse in the first place and with regards to the wholly dismissive way in which the subsequent allegations were acted upon.”

Garsden and Scorer called for a new law to make the reporting of allegations of sexual abuse to the authorities mandatory.

The Catholic church in England noted the report’s conclusions and said it stood by expressions of regret and apologies already made on its behalf to victims and survivors.

“All sexual abuse of children and vulnerable adults is both criminal and harmful. The church condemns without reservation any such crimes and the perpetrators of these crimes must be brought to justice,” it said.

IICSA will hold a further public hearing into another Benedictine abbey and school, Ealing and St Benedict’s, early next year.