They knew Carlile would be delayed

At the time the Carlile inquiry was announced in mid-September, it was already known that Pearce and Maestri had been arrested the month before.

The school's solicitor Tony Nelson was and is representing David Pearce. He would have attended police interviews and would have had a decent idea as to whether charges were likely. And in fact charges did follow in November.

But no mention was made by the Abbot or Headmaster as to the possibility of delays in the report from this cause at the safeguarding meeting. And there was no mention by anybody connected with the school of the possibility that the criminal prosecution of Pearce and Maestri might delay the report when they were in fact charged in November.

And there wasn't even any mention of the possibility of delays from this cause in the article in the Headmaster's Newsletter in February this year.

Tony Nelson must have known from the outset of the possibility that the report could compromise the trial. He's in the best possible position to know, since he commissioned Lord Carlile to carry out the inquiry and is representing David Pearce.

It must have also been pretty clear to Lord Carlile that charges were likely in the case of those who had already been arrested. In email exchanges I had with Lord Carlile before I met him in connection with the inquiry, he made it a condition of the meeting that it be kept confidential until after the report had been published. I pointed out that if publication were cancelled or unreasonably delayed, then that would put a obligation on me to keep the meeting secret for ever, which was not something I was prepared to accept. He eventually agreed that in the event of a substantial delay, I would be free to publish my own account, but he adamantly refused to put any kind of duration on what he meant by "substantial".

From our exchange of emails it is completely clear that even at the end of September Carlile was anticipating the possibility of a significant delay. He would have been most remiss in not advising his client accordingly, and I can only reasonably assume that he did give that advice. So the Abbot and the headmaster knew right from the start that the original estimates they gave of publication dates were wildly unrealistic. And even though Carlile knew that the publication dates being given out were unrealistic, he stuck to his cutoff dates for the Call for Evidence, as if the report were not going to be delayed.

But if the Abbot and Headmaster had told the parents at the meeting in September that the report would probably not be published for almost a year, tempers were running so high that there might have been a serious revolt amongst the parents. Doing nothing for a year is just not an acceptable response to a situation this serious. Doing nothing for a year while you are promising action somewhat faster is just plain lying. There is no better word for it. The evidence very much points to the conclusion that the Abbot and Headmaster have been lying to you. And remember that they delayed sending out the ISI Supplementary Report to parents until the school fees were safely in for the autumn term.

I'll leave it to you to decide how serious they are about making changes to the school.