Clerical sex-abuse scandal CHRISTOPHER LAMB
‘Demonstrably unacceptable’
The Carlile report into sexual abuse at Ealing Abbey’s St Benedict’s School showed a failure to act in dealing with paedophilia. The woeful inadequacy of governance at the school also raises question marks over the way other schools are run
ope Benedict XVI, during his visit to Britain, praised the “vital contri- bution” to the prevention of child abuse made by church safeguarding professionals in England and Wales. The child-protection guidelines recommended by Lord Nolan a decade ago and the 2007 Cumberlege Commission are seen by many as an example for other countries to follow. But if the Church in England and Wales has led the way when it comes to safeguarding procedures, it has also shown how intractable the problem of dealing with abuse is. Last year, Ealing Abbey’s Benedictine monastic community, which runs St Benedict’s School, in west London, commissioned Lord Carlile QC to produce a report into safeguarding at the school after a wave of allegations of abuse were made against monks and former teachers in the last decade, reaching a crescendo over the last two years. The Liberal Democrat peer produced his findings on Wednesday, and much of it makes for uncomfortable reading for all concerned. While, post-Nolan and Cumberlege, the
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Church is under a clear obligation to report allegations of abuse to the civil authorities and withdraw those credibly accused of abuse from contact with children, that was not hap-
The monastery of Sant’Anselmo is one of those oases of calm that dot the hills of Rome. The huge, red, neo-romantic building, neigh- bouring the headquarters of the Order of Malta and the Dominicans, houses the Pontifical Liturgical Institute and the head- quarters of the Benedictine order. It must have seemed a true sanctuary for Abbot Laurence Soper when he arrived more than 10 years ago after his sudden – and unex- pected – resignation as the Abbot of Ealing. Soper had been re-elected as abbot by the Ealing Benedictines after serving one full term as their head. During his tenure, the west London monastery had marked the cen- tenary of its foundation – it began life as an offshoot of Downside – with an ambitious building programme, which had included extending the main abbey church, never fully completed since it was bombed during the Second World War, and building an additional chapel. Dramatic lighting and abstract stained glass had not been to everyone’s taste, so when Soper quit not long after his re- election, a rumour started to circulate thathe
6 | THE TABLET | 12 November 2011
pening at Ealing. In his report, Lord Carlile criticised the monastic community for “its lengthy and culpable failure to deal with what at times must have been evident behaviour placing children at risk”. He went on: “It is difficult to conceptualise a situation in which monks were not suspicious of or at least alerted to the possibility of abusive or inappropriate behaviour by colleagues.” His report lists allegations on a chart, most
of which date back to the 1970s and 1980s, against eight individuals: five monks and three lay teachers. Of these, two – one monk and one teacher – have been convicted. To make matters worse, one of the accused, Fr Laurence Soper, a former abbot who has four separate allegations of abuse made against him, has breached his bail conditions (see article below for more details on this case). Lord Carlile says that the “most serious” lapse by the abbey concerns Fr David Pearce, now serving an eight-year sentence (reduced to five on appeal). After the monastery paid out compensation to a victim in a civil case in 2004, Fr Pearce remained at the abbey under the restriction that he had no access to children. Three years later, however, he was found to have developed an improper relationship with a 17-year-old pupil who had
been washing up in the monastery kitchen. As a result of these cases, Lord Carlile calls for a new governing structure for the school which would dramatically reduce its contact with the monastic community. At the heart of the problem, he says, is the inadequate gov- ernance of the monastery and the school which is “lacking independence, transparency, accountability” and “wholly outdated and demonstrably unacceptable”. He wants reform to be in place in Ealing by next September. But the Carlile proposals could well be more
far-reaching than that, for they have impli- cations for other Benedictine communities that also run schools in Britain. At Ealing, the school and community are governed by a single charitable trust. The trustees of the charity, all monks, have overall control of the school, which has no board of governors. There is, however, a group of “school advisers” who, while able to “exert considerable influ- ence when they wish to”, have no formal power over the running of the school. Most eminent among this group is Lord
Patten, the chairman of the BBC Trust and a former pupil of St Benedict’s. The report does not say whether any of this group of advisers, which includes a former headmaster of Dulwich College, a retired solicitor and a
In search of Abbot Soper
■One of the monks named in the Carlile report into the sexual abuse scandal at Ealing Abbey and St Benedict’s School is Laurence Soper, the former abbot, who has been missing since March. Catherine Pepinster, the editor of The Tablet, reports from Rome, where Fr Soper was last sighted
had left in a fit of pique after falling out with his monks over the cost of the building work. His departure in 2000 was put down to the Benedictine tradition of an outgoing abbot spending a year away while letting his suc- cessor settle in. But Soper didn’t spend a year away: he never returned, except for the joint funeral of two of his confrères, and the re- election of his successor. Now, after revelations that Soper has been
both investigated by the police over allegations of child abuse and that he has failed to answer police bail, there is growing speculation as to whether his departure to Rome all those
years ago was due to far more than a row about money back home. Was it the start of a scandal about child abuse that has engulfed Ealing Abbey and its school, St Benedict’s, culminating in the inquiry by Lord Carlile QC, whose report was published this week, and an apostolic visitation to the monastery, ordered by Rome? The rumours about Soper have been fuelled by his failure to return to Britain to answer more questions from the police. But what people in Ealing did not realise when its cur- rent abbot, Martin Shipperlee, gave a recent public statement about his predecessor’s
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