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Ampleforth and Downside (English Benedictine Congregation Case Study) Investigation Report August 2018 Investigation Report

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Ampleforth and Downside (English Benedictine Congregation Case Study) Investigation Report August 2018 Investigation Report Ampleforth and Downside (English Benedictine Congregation case study) case study) Congregation Benedictine (English and Downside Ampleforth Ampleforth and Downside (English Benedictine Congregation case study) Investigation Report August 2018 Investigation Report Investigation August 2018 2018 Ampleforth and Downside (English Benedictine Congregation case study) Investigation Report August 2018 A report of the Inquiry Panel Professor Alexis Jay OBE Professor Sir Malcolm Evans KCMG OBE Ivor Frank Drusilla Sharpling CBE © Crown copyright 2018 The text of this document (this excludes, where present, the Royal Arms and all departmental or agency logos) may be reproduced free of charge in any format or medium provided that it is reproduced accurately and not in a misleading context. The material must be acknowledged as Crown copyright and the document title specified. Where third‑party material has been identified, permission from the respective copyright holder must be sought. Any enquiries related to this publication should be sent to us at [email protected] or Freepost IICSA INDEPENDENT INQUIRY. This publication is available at https://www.iicsa.org.uk/reports and from https://www.gov.uk/government/publications ISBN 978‑1‑5286‑0743‑8 CCS0718147734 08/18 Printed on paper containing 75% recycled‑fibre content minimum. Printed in the UK by the APS Group on behalf of the Controller of Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. Contents Executive summary iii Part A: Introduction 1 The background to the investigation 2 Ampleforth and Downside: the reasons for their selection 4 Issues considered 5 Guide to this report 5 Modes of address 6 Ciphering 6 References 7 The English Benedictine Congregation 7 The Benedictine Confederation and the English Benedictine Congregation: structure in outline 7 Functions of an English Benedictine monastery 11 The safeguarding framework – legislation and guidance in outline 11 The Nolan Report 15 The English Benedictine Congregation (EBC) response 18 Continuing developments 19 The Cumberlege Report 2007 – ‘Safeguarding with Confidence’ 20 Part B: Ampleforth 25 Chronology of abbots, priors and headmasters 28 Background 29 Governance and safeguarding 31 External oversight 32 Allegations 33 Physical and emotional abuse 1960–1980 35 Accounts of child sexual abuse before the Nolan Report (1960–2001) 37 Accounts of child sexual abuse after the Nolan Report (2001–2010) 59 The institutional response 64 Response before the Nolan Report (1960–2001) 64 Response after the Nolan Report (2001) 66 Recent reviews and inspections (2016–2018) 93 The independent external review (2016–2017) – the Proctor Report 93 ISI inspection at Ampleforth College (March 2018) 94 Charity Commission findings – April 2018 95 Looking forward 95 i Part C: Downside 97 Chronology of abbots, priors and headmasters 100 Background 101 Governance and safeguarding structure 102 External oversight 104 Allegations 105 Accounts of child sexual abuse made before the Nolan Report (1960–2001) 106 Accounts of child sexual abuse made after the Nolan Report (2001–2010) 139 The institutional response 153 Response before the Nolan Report (1960–2001) 154 Response after the Nolan Report (2001) 156 Recent reviews and inspections (2018) 176 Social Care Institute for Excellence audit (2018) 176 Looking forward 178 Part D: Conclusions 179 Annexes 183 Annex 1: Overview of process and evidence obtained by the Inquiry in connection with this public hearing 184 Annex 2: Glossary of terms 192 Annex 3: Acronyms 199 Annex 4: Extract from the Nolan Report 203 ii Executive summary There are 10 English Benedictine Congregation (EBC) monasteries in England and none in Wales. Some of the abbeys have schools associated with them, including Ampleforth and Downside. Both are regarded as leading Catholic independent schools, each with acknowledged academic and sporting achievement, and both are now co‑educational. The EBC is not pyramidical in structure; it has no recognisable line management oversight. Each abbot or abbess has responsibility for their own community, which is autonomous. Nor does the monastic order fit neatly into the Catholic diocesan structure, meaning that the relationship to a diocesan bishop is usually collaborative rather than hierarchical. It is difficult to describe the appalling sexual abuse inflicted over decades on children aged as young as seven at Ampleforth School, and 11 at Downside School. Ten individuals, mostly monks, connected to these two institutions have been convicted or cautioned in relation to offences involving sexual activity with a large number of children, or offences concerning pornography. The true scale of the abuse however is likely to be considerably higher. Some examples of the abuse are set out below. Piers Grant‑Ferris was convicted of 20 counts of indecent assault against 15 boys who attended the junior school at Ampleforth. A victim of Piers Grant‑Ferris described how he had made him remove his clothes in the confessional of the chapel, then beat his bare bottom. Another incident took place in a bathroom when he was forced to strip naked and to place his hands and feet on each side of a bathtub, so he was straddling the bath, with his genitals hanging down. He was then beaten on his bare bottom, an event he found ‘absolutely terrifying’. During these repeated beatings, Grant‑Ferris would masturbate. One man, whose alleged victims appear to have been aged between eight and 12 years, would give and receive oral sex, both privately and in front of other pupils in the Ampleforth school workshop. He was said to have abused at least 11 children over a sustained period of time but died before the police investigated. Statements given to the police indicate that the alleged abuse consisted of mutual masturbation, digital penetration of the anus, oral sex and forcing children to perform sex acts on each other. One monk, Nicholas White, sexually abused a number of boys over several years, while he was a geography teacher in Downside’s junior school. In addition, there have been allegations of a wide spectrum of physical abuse, much of which had sadistic and sexual overtones. One victim, from the 1960s, described his abuser at Ampleforth as ‘an out‑and‑out sadist’ who would regularly beat boys in front of each other and would ‘beat me for no reason at all’. iii Many perpetrators did not hide their sexual interests from the children. At Ampleforth, this included communal activities both outdoors and indoors where there was fondling of children, mutual masturbation and group masturbation. Participation was encouraged and sometimes demanded. The blatant openness of these activities demonstrates there was a culture of acceptance of abusive behaviour. In 2001, the Nolan Report made recommendations on how the Catholic Church should deal with the safeguarding of children. This was a turning point in the Church’s policy. The Nolan Report clearly set out the agenda for change, which was based on taking a unified approach across the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, to be adopted by bishops, their dioceses and religious orders. The report further recommended they should all work together to develop and implement a single set of arrangements nationally. In 2007, the Cumberlege Review endorsed this. The Nolan Report in 2001 recommended that incidents or allegations of sexual abuse should be referred to the statutory authorities who must be given full cooperation. At Ampleforth and Downside, a number of allegations were never referred to the police but were handled internally. On occasion, abbots saw fit to set up their own procedures, contrary to the Nolan Report, despite the fact that they lacked expertise in child protection and risk assessment. By 2002/3 the Catholic Church had appointed diocesan safeguarding officers who were expected to be involved in handling any allegations or disclosures. There was hostility to the Nolan Report in both institutions for some time after its formal adoption. They seemed to take a view that its implementation was neither obligatory nor desirable. This failure to comply appeared to go unchallenged by the Catholic Church. In Ampleforth and Downside, any move to change or develop safeguarding practices was unduly dependent on the attitude and leadership of the abbot. For example, in Ampleforth, Abbot Timothy Wright held strong views about child sexual abuse allegations which amounted to a repudiation of the Nolan recommendations. Although he initially appeared to engage with the recommendations, in essence, he wanted nothing to do with their implementation. He clung to outdated beliefs about ‘paedophilia’ and had an immovable attitude of always knowing best. For much of the time under consideration by the Inquiry, the overriding concern in both Ampleforth and Downside was to avoid contact with the local authority or the police at all costs, regardless of the seriousness of the alleged abuse or actual knowledge of its occurrence. Rather than refer a suspected perpetrator to the police, in several instances the abbots in both places would confine the individual to the abbey or transfer him and the known risk to a parish or other location. On occasions, the recipient of the erring monk would not be adequately informed of the risk, with the result that constraints on access to children were not fully enforced. Some children were abused as a consequence. iv The ‘confinement’ of monks to the abbey, as a precautionary measure, had some merit, but it was no substitute for referral of suspected abuse or allegations to the police. Porous boundaries between the abbey and schools within the extensive grounds made it easy for ‘confined’ monks to breach the conditions of their confinement. The abbots at Ampleforth and Downside were often lax in their enforcement of such conditions. When abuse committed by Nicholas White came to light, he was moved to the senior school and was even allowed to assume the role of housemaster to his first victim. The abuse of a second victim could have been prevented if the abbot, John Roberts, and the headmaster had referred the first abuse to the police and social services.
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