Father David Pearce

Yes, at the time of writing he is still Father David Pearce. He's due out of prison fairly shortly, having served half of his five year sentence. If he hasn't been laicized by the time he leaves prison, the church will have a responsibility to house him, since he will still be a priest.

I asked Peter Turner whether Pearce had been laicized yet, and if not, whether he would be by the time he left prison. He has written the following in reply.

It is anticipated that by the time of his release from prison Fr David Pearce will be laicised.

Anticipated. Not certain. Especially as it is up to Rome, not the church in the UK. I have a sneaking suspicion that he will still be a priest on the day he comes out of prison. I'll keep you posted on anything I learn on the subject.

UPDATE 10 February
I have just received an email from Peter Turner in which he says "I can now confirm that the laicisation process regarding David Pearce is now completed."

Good.

Father Gregory Chillman

Time for a recap. Paragraphs 57 and 58 of the Carlile report stated the following.

57. There remained continuing concerns about what should happen to monks who had been convicted, banned (named in List 99) so that they should not work with children, or otherwise should not have any access to children in the school. This was a concern of mine from the earliest stages of my Inquiry. I have discussed the issue with the Abbot, who was alert to the inevitability of a change from previous practice. I recognise that the sense of responsibility felt by the Community for its Brothers, even those who have strayed and sinned heinously, is considerable.

58. I am pleased to say that the Abbot has accepted that another dwelling has to be found for any member of the monastic community falling within the categories described, and that none is at the Abbey now. This must continue as a permanent policy.

Simple enough. Monks on restricted ministry because of behaviour towards children can't stay at the Abbey.

It isn't just Carlile who made this point. it was previously made by the ISI in its April 2010 supplementary inspection report, and Carlile reported that the issue had attracted high-level interest in the DfE. This is paragraph 68 of the Carlile report.

68. The Department for Education, to Ministerial level, has been following carefully the progress of the ISI inspections. I have reviewed the correspondence. The Minister of State for Schools in July 2010 sought reassurance that all the recommendations the ISI had made would be implemented promptly. This has been done. The Minister was particularly concerned about the arrangements whereby monks, after conviction or being placed on List 99, had continued to live at the Abbey, even under restrictions imposed by the Abbey in consultation with the Archdiocese of Westminster. These arrangements were described as ‘ineffective’ (and the practice no longer continues).

One of the monks mentioned by Carlile as having substantiated allegations against him is Father Gregory Chillman. It indicates that the outcome of an allegation against him was "Deemed inappropriate behaviour, restrictions imposed." At the press conference for publication of the report, the BBC caused a great deal of confusion when they asked where Father Gregory Chillman was now living. It was subsequently clarified that he was away from the Abbey at the time.

Well, he wasn't away for all that long, just long enough for the dust to settle. He has continued to be listed on the abbey website among the monks resident at Ealing Abbey. I thought that might be an error, so I wrote to Peter Turner (the diocesan safeguarding adviser) and he replied as follows.

Fr Gregory Chillman is still residing in the Monastery under restrictions and is not allowed to partake in any public ministry.

So, despite the inspection report of the ISI, despite the recommendation of Lord Carlile, despite the assurances made to the Minister of State for Schools, despite the Abbot being "alert to the inevitability of a change from previous practice", despite Lord Carlile's belief stated in the report itself that "the practice no longer continues", Chillman remains at the abbey under restriction.

What on earth is going on there?

Abuse must have no hiding place

The following is the text of an article I wrote that has been published in this week's edition of The Tablet.

================

One man's blog has highlighted complaints of abuse at St Benedict's School, Ealing, and what he believes are the monks' shortcomings in addressing them. But here the author of the blog identifies potential difficulties with protecting the vulnerable at all independent schools .

The abuse that happened at the schools run by the abbeys of Ealing, west London, and Downside in Somerset is unacceptable and the long coverup that occurred even more so. At Ealing, eight monks and teachers have had credible accusations of child abuse against them: one of these, Fr David Pearce, is in prison after abusing a pupil in 2007 and another - a former abbot, Fr Laurence Soper - has gone missing after failing to keep an appointment with police to discuss abuse allegations against him. At Downside, complaints against seven monks have been made public, among them Fr Richard White, a teacher who was jailed earlier this month for abusing two pupils in the 1980s.

To put it bluntly, successive abbots at both locations harboured criminals who they knew or should have known had committed sex crimes against the children in their care. It is a Catholic mess, and it is a Catholic responsibility to clear it up. It is urgent to learn the lessons of Ealing and Downside and apply those lessons to all Catholic schools.

Unfortunately, Lord Carlile’s report on how pupils of St Benedict's can be better protected in future is of little help. Apart from repeating recommendations already made by the Independent Schools Inspectorate (ISI) and a previous independent review, his only real proposal is for a change of governance so that the school is run by a separate trust with a larger board of trustees from a variety of backgrounds under a lay chairman.

At Ealing Abbey the senior monks are currently both trustees and beneficiaries of a charitable trust responsible for monastery, school and parish. The arrangements at Downside are similar. This is not a healthy state of affairs. Even with the best will in the world, the monks will tend to prioritise their own interests above those of the other beneficiaries.

Lord Carlile's proposal is a good idea on general principles, but it is not a magic bullet. It is not just schools run by monks or even just Catholic independent schools which can have trouble with sexual abuse. There have been cases of abuses covered up by independent secular schools as well.

Carlile assigned primary blame to the abusers themselves. This is true, but provides no guidance as to how to combat a career paedophile in an occupation where he gains trusted access to many potential victims. Outwardly, abusers cannot be distinguished from the many honest and hardworking priests, teachers and youth workers. It can take children a long time to report abuse, so by the time something is noticed there might already be a serious problem in the school.

At this point, school authorities (Catholic or otherwise) face a dilemma. Independent schools are, in effect, businesses. They compete with each other for pupils and the fee income they generate. An independent school's reputation is a key asset. The governors have arguably conflicting duties to protect the children and to maintain the reputation of the school.

It's easy for management to believe that these conflicting duties can be reconciled. This is where things can go horribly wrong. Management might delude itself into thinking that an allegation is mistaken, malicious or trivial, or assume that a member of staff has been so frightened by an allegation that he won't abuse again, and so decide that the children can be protected without reporting the incident to the authorities. Once one incident has been covered up, management is compromised and it's hard not to do the same next time, lest the previous bad decision also come to light. The cumulative effect of this can be decades of unhindered abuse.

Schools must prioritise child protection, and so must without exception make a commitment to report promptly in writing every allegation and incident of abuse to the Local Authority Designated Officer for Child Protection (LADO).

There is a major gap in the SI Benedict's policy which Lord Carlile apparently hasn't noticed. Paragraph 30(c) requires that the school "satisfy the wishes of the complainant's parents". This is dangerous because the wishes of the parents can be manipulated. It would be easy for a head teacher to say, ''Your child has had a bad experience. We don't want to make it worse by having lots of strangers ask him questions about it.” How many parents in such difficult circumstances would have the knowledge and force of personality to insist that the authorities be contacted against the recommendation of the head teacher?

The Downside policy also has a serious weakness. It promises (with exceptions) only to "consult" the LADO, not to report all allegations in writing.

It is vitally important that it be made unthinkable to hide abuse. A commitment to report all allegations was recommended in the 2001 Nolan report. It is hugely disappointing that two schools at the centre of sex-abuse scandals seem still not to have got this basic point right.

Parents should review the safeguarding policies of their children's schools. If there is no commitment on reporting, or if it looks like the school has given itself wriggle-room by allowing exceptions, or the policy is just hard to follow, then the school needs to make improvements.

It would be wrong to assume that Ofsted or ISI have checked a school's policy. ISI inspected St Benedict's in November 2009 (a month after Fr David Pearce was sentenced) and found nothing wrong, even though the policy did not meet regulations. In any case, they can only insist that the school meets statutory requirements, and unbelievably there isn't a statutory requirement on schools to report allegations or even a known crime of child abuse to the LADO.

A strong safeguarding policy deters abusers. By contrast, a weak policy which avoids committing to immediate reporting is an open invitation to abusers to try their luck. Once one abuser has been protected, others will know they also can operate with impunity.

This isn't just about the monks of Ealing and Downside. In my view, separating the governance of either school from its abbey won't magically remove the temptation to cover up abuse. What happened there might happen anywhere. It is up to us all to make sure it doesn't by checking the safeguarding policies of their local school and parishes. Safeguarding is everybody's business.

• Jonathan West is the parent of a former pupil at St Benedict's School and the author of a blog, Confessions of a Skeptic.

Reporting is important

In The Times today

A paedophile primary school teacher was able to abuse children as young as six for years because his head teacher ignored concerns raised by colleagues.

Nigel Leat, who was jailed indefinitely last year, sexually abused dozens of pupils over a period of 15 years at the small village school near Weston-super-Mare in Somerset.

And how was he able to get away with it for so long? It is explained later in the article.

Before he was sentenced at Bristol Crown Court in June, detectives from Avon and Somerset Constabulary described Leat as “manipulative” and said he had been able to dupe colleagues who had no suspicion of what was going on. But yesterday an independent serious case review commissioned by the local education authority revealed that, far from being unaware, staff had repeatedly raised concerns with the head teacher but the warnings were ignored.

A total of 30 “inappropriate” incidents were witnessed by staff. Of these, 11 were officially reported to Chris Hood, the head teacher, but not one was passed on to the board of governors or the local education authority.

Tony Oliver, chair of the North Somerset Safeguarding Children Board, said there had been a “gross failure of responsibility” at the school. Mr Hood was suspended then sacked after Leat’s abuse came to light.

Mr Oliver said: “The fact that these incidents were reported within the school and not acted upon is incredible. It was grossly negligent that those incidents were not reported to the local authority. There was an endemic culture of neglect.”

This is why I keep going on here about how important it is that all allegations of abuse are immediately reported in writing to the Local Authority Designated Officer for Child protection (LADO).

Three Ofsted reports compiled during Leat’s time at the school raised no concerns and rated it as “good” and “academically successful”.

Three consecutive OFSTED reports didn't notice that the school's safeguarding arrangements simply weren't working. Parents, you are on your own. if you don't check the safeguarding policies of your children's schools, then nobody will.

Father Raphael Appleby

This week's Tablet contains an article about how Abbot Aidan Bellenger dealt with the allegations of abuse of a vulnerable adult by Father Raphael Appleby. This is Bellenger's description of the matter.

I did not think that before 2010 there was a safeguarding issue, I regarded it as a pastoral issue. Now I think that was possibly not the correct judgement. I didn’t speak to the safeguarding people until 2010. If that was an error, I just don’t know. I accepted [the complainant’s] word, but Fr Raphael was a person whom many people idolised. He is not in denial of a relationship, but denies it was abusive.

In one short paragraph, this perfectly encapsulates why it is vital that all allegations should promptly be reported to the authorities. The Abbot has fallen into the classic trap of assuming that Fr Raphael was such a good person that he would never to anything like that. Fr Raphael after all was a senior monk and former headmaster of Downside School, and was "a person whom many people idolised".

And of course Fr Raphael would deny that he was an abuser. That is what abusers do, partly simply because they don't want to get caught, but also because they convince themselves that what they do is not abusive.

The Tablet's report goes on to say.

The victim maintains that from the first meeting with Abbot Aidan, a complaint of abuse was made against Fr Raphael. The victim also says that in 2009 a letter giving full details of the abuse was sent to the abbot. Abbot Aidan made no comment on reports that correspondence on the abuse was missing from Fr Raphael’s personal file when police officers from the Avon and Somerset force came to investigate the person’s claim. A force spokesman said they had to obtain duplicates from the victim.

Ah, the missing records malady! Ealing sneezes and Downside catches the cold. This unfortunately is by far from being the first I have heard about inconvenient records going astray. At the start of the Carlile inquiry, I learned that St. Benedict's School had no records of John' Maestri's employment. And during the trial of Stephen Skelton last autumn, it turned out that the school had kept no records of him either.

There are seven monks now know to have acted criminally or improperly. Two convicted, two cautioned, one given a police warning and two placed on restricted ministry because they are thought to pose a risk to children. Just imagine the strain it has been on successive abbots trying to keep all that quiet all these years.

And that is just the monks. At Ealing, only one monk has been convicted but also two lay teachers.As far as I know, there has been nothing looked into with regard to lay teachers at Downside. The abbot has passed over the records of the monks to the police and diocesan authorities, but not so far as I know those of the lay teachers. I wonder what nasties there might still be waiting to crawl out from under that particular rock.

Brother Anselm

The Times has more on Michael Hurt, also known as Brother Anselm.

He taught at Downside during the 1960s but left the order because of “conflict” and worked in adult education in Liverpool before moving to Ireland. In 1996 he rejoined the Benedictines and was accepted at Glenstal as a novice.

He was cautioned by officers from Avon & Somerset Constabulary during an 18-month investigation into Downside. While a police caution does not amount to a conviction, by accepting it, a person acknowledges the offence.

Brother Martin Browne of Glenstal Abbey said: “The allegation for which Br Anselm was cautioned by UK police dates back more than forty years. It is a matter of public record (from many media appearances over the years) that Br Anselm left Downside Abbey in 1970, and was laicised. Many years later, having settled in Ireland, he began monastic life again, entering Glenstal as a novice in 1996.

It is understood that Hurt gave up his role in a chess club for young people after accepting the caution. Fr Bellenger did not name Hurt in his weekend letter to past pupils but referred to “a monk who left this country many years ago” receiving “a formal police caution for the abuse of a pupil during his time at Downside in the 1960s”.

Brother Anselm ran the Glenstal kitchens, feeding 40 monks and their guests with such panache that he published Brother Anselm’s Glenstal Cookbook to acclaim in 2009. The 65 recipes cover traditional dishes such as kedgeree, treacle tart and curries, with illustrations of monks at work and rest.

Brother Anselm and [his brother] John Hurt, star of the Elephant Man and the Harry Potter films, attracted a huge audience when they appeared together as guests on Irish television’s Late Late Show. British TV viewers saw them together on Who Do You Think You Are? when the pair, sons of an Anglican clergyman, investigated their possible Irish roots.

So, let me see if I understand this.

Michael Hurt rejoined the Benedictines in 1996, at Glenstal Abbey. Downside either wasn't asked about or didn't disclose his past abuses, and neither did Hurt himself.

Glenstal Abbey has a school attached. Until the police came calling Hurt had access to children. There was lots of publicity about Hurt's presence at Glenstal and still Downside kept schtumm, and didn't even slip a quiet warning to Glenstal about Hurt's past and suggest that he might be best kept away from children.

It seems to me that Downside has been wholly concerned about its own reputation, and wasn't even prepared to mention a problem to fellow-Benedictines.

I'm not sure what is the word to describe such behaviour, but I don't think "Christian" comes anywhere near it.

The second cautioned monk

Abbot Aidan Bellenger only named one of the two monks who has recently been given a caution. The other who has gone to live in Ireland, was left unnamed. The Belfast Telegraph has named him. He is Richard Hurt, also known as Brother Anselm.

He is presently living at Glenstal Abbey in Co Limerick, a Benedictine monastery in the Republic of Ireland. The Abbey has a school attached. It appears they did not know of his past, and Downside did not tell them.

The current headmaster at Glenstal, Brother Martin Browne, said last night that Glenstal operated totally independently of Downside and had not become aware until last February that an allegation had been made against Brother Anselm.

He pointed out that Brother Anselm had no teaching role there and that his only contact with pupils had been through a chess club. That contact was immediately terminated when Glenstal became aware of the allegation, he added.