The Ealing IICSA hearing - comments

I've taken some time off concerning the IICSA and the Ealing hearings. I needed to take a bit of time away from what is an unpleasant subject, and the day job has required some attention.

However, some people have asked questions in response to my previous articlesm and I now have the energy to offer a belated answer or two.

Peter Agius said "I'd be interested to read your comments on all that Jamison had to say." That's a good and interesting question, and was covered in the closing submissions from the lawyers representing me and various of the Ealing survivors. This would have gone into the oral closing sumbission but had to be cut for lack of time. it went subsequently into the written submission following the end of the hearing.

The evidence given at the end of this case study by current Abbot President Christopher Jamison was on any view clear, seemingly forward thinking and filled with media-friendly soundbites.

Yet the Panel should note that Jamison was giving evidence from a distinctly fortunate position: the Inquiry has been unable to investigate in detail Worth Abbey and School, for which Christopher Jamison was responsible for 8 years. Given the unremittingly grim state of safeguarding at all of the Benedictine settings the Inquiry has examined in detail to date, there is every reason to think that the history of child sexual abuse at Worth is just as appalling as that of Ampleforth and Downside and Ealing and St Benedict’s.

Indeed, had the Inquiry chosen to examine Worth rather than Ealing and St Benedict’s in detail, it is entirely possible that we would by now have heard of Abbot Jamison’s resignation and Abbot Martin Shipperlee’s elevation to the role of Abbot President.

Anonymous (11 Feb at 11:55) said 'The key question remains the killer question is “why has St Benedicts School and the Abbey harvested so many convicted child abusers, who continued their abuse for years, in positions of senior authority ? What does it say about the culture supported and encouraged by the governing bodies ?"'

Ultimately we will never wholly know the answer, but it is pretty clear from the evidence given by Shipperlee and Yeo during the hearing that the loyalty of successive abbots was to the institution and to the monks therein - and not to those whom the institutions and monks had taken into their care. Those of the monks who abused children rapidly learned they would be protected by their peers. There were A number of moments in the evidence which particularly struck me.

Q.  Since David Pearce's release in 2011, did Ealing Abbey, or does Ealing Abbey or the English Benedictine Congregation provide him with housing?
A.  He lives in a --
Q.  You don't have to tell us exactly where he lives.
A.  He lives in a flat for which we pay the rent.  A small flat.
Q.  Do you provide him with a pension?
A..  We don't provide him with a pension, no.
Q.  Do you provide him with any other financial assistance?
A.  No.
Q.  So he just has the flat?
A.  Yes.
Q.  No other financial assistance at all?
A.  No.
Q.  Where does the money come from to pay for the flat?
A.  From our funds, charitable funds.
Q.  Do you have approval from the Charity Commission for that?  Do you write to the Charity Commission asking whether it is a valid use of charitable funds?
A.  I haven't.  I don't know if the bursar did.  It doesn't seem to be up in the record.

Let's just be clear about this. Pearce was convicted & sentenced to 5 years for abuses of 5 separate boys. And the Abbot of Ealing authorised that Ealing pay the rent on his flat out of charitable funds. If this degree of support is offered to a convicted abuser who is no longer a monk, how much more do you think monks will be supported when they are merely accused and not (yet) convicted?

Well, you don't need to think, because we have witness statements which tell you. The following is from the witness statement of Kate Ravenscroft, a drama teacher at the school.

"At the time, the school felt a bit like the Mafia, if anybody complained or said anything about Pearce, Laurence Soper would protect him and to complain meant putting your job on the line. I didn't know what to say to the boy. There had been a number of complaints against Pearce; he had been moved from the junior school to the upper school, to the bursar's office."

Another teacher, Mr Halsall, said

"I made complaints about both Pearce and Maestri but they didn't go anywhere and it definitely harmed my career. At times, it felt like the Mafia, like ramming your head against a brick wall. I believe they all knew how I felt about the various activities and so were very careful around me."

And it wasn't just Shipperlee who was taking this attitude. Richard Yeo, for several years the Abbot President, as also questioned. Here is a portion of the transcript

Q. BNT006837, again, a handwritten note. It may be we don't need to pull many up. If we can go to page 2. There are a number of references made by monks that you interviewed at the Extraordinary Visitation about longstanding knowledge or suspicion of David Pearce. At the bottom of page 2, two lines below "name redacted":
"When arrived -- 25 years ago -- rumours, and denied; but disappointed RC-F307 says never knew anything about it ... Don't know who to ask, don't know how to talk about it."
Another note -- I won't take you to it -- is: "Abbot felt very angry at David when arrested, felt betrayed by one he had tried to help."
Another says: "Still an abusive mentality in the community."
Another says: "Mid 1970s. Knew David engaged in dubious activities."
Another says: "Since I knew I was junior school head, there was something wrong. Something said about graffiti that said "Father David is bent".
So there were a lot of concerns raised with you 1 during this Visitation?
A. There were, and I go back to what I said before: the concerns weren't exclusively about safeguarding, or, to put it another way, resolving the malaise, if I can put it like that, in the community wasn't just a matter of improving safeguarding procedures; it was a matter of improving the community's human formation, to use a modern term.
Q. What was your reaction to this extensive knowledge of Pearce that appears to have gone back decades?
A. A certain amount of amazement. When I first heard about it in 2001, I was extremely surprised.
Q. Did you think that -- sorry?
A. Sorry, if I can go on. And I challenged Abbot Martin about this.
Q. You did?
A. Towards the end of the Visitation, I saw him and asked him very specifically what he'd known about Father David and he answered --
Q. What did he say?
A. Much the same as what he said to the inquiry, that is to say, he knew that he was -- in the school, he was unfair, that he was harsh, and he was guilty of favouritism. He --
Q. Did you -- I'm so sorry, I keep cutting -- I should look at you and see when you have stopped.
A. He knew that a nickname had been given him, but he said that he felt that this was just boys talking and didn't take it as an allegation.

Q. Did you think that the community was at fault or that Abbot Martin may have been at fault for not reporting David Pearce to the civil authorities when rumours first surfaced -- well, in the 1970s, that the community had not dealt with it. Should it have been dealt with?
 A. I don't know whether you can report on the basis -- report rumours. I would have thought that --
Q. You can investigate on the basis of rumours, can't you, and if something is reported, enquiries can be made?
A. Fine. My concern was, above all, how is the community going to get out of this mess? Those are the questions I was looking at.

So let's just summarise this. Yeo conducted a Visitation, and in the course of the visitation interviewed the monks, several of whom told him of some degree of knowledge spanning decades of abuses by Pearce. And Yeo's concern, above all, was "how is the community going to get out of this mess?"

On 27 February Elly asked this question "I agree with all you say. . . What I genuinely don't understand is why, when it is clear that various adults knew abuse was going on and chose not to go to the police, those adults are not being prosecuted. Isn't there already a law about being an accessory during and/or after the fact? "

Unfortunately, to be an accessory after the fact, it is necessary to be far more active in assisting an offender than merely not reporting abuse. In English law it is not a crime to fail to report a crime. If the police come calling and ask you questions, then you're not allowed to give untruthful answers. But if you know of questions the police ought to be asking but haven't asked, you're under no legal obligation to put them right on this.

I agree with Elly when she went on to comment that "Prosecution is probably the only language such morally devoid people are going to understand." The UK is one of relatively few countries in the world that does not have a "mandatory reporting" law requiring that suspicions of child sex abuse be reported to the authorities. Mr O'Donnell (representing me and several Ealing survivors), in his closing statement to the inquiry said this about mandatory reporting.

Modern society requires that the first concern should be the safeguarding of children and we say that the English Benedictine Congregation can't be trusted to do this. The answer as to how to do this, we say, is, of course, mandatory reporting. You have heard relatively little evidence from external agencies. There was no time to hear from the Independent Schools Inspectorate or the Department for Education, for example. But what you have heard suggests they're effectively powerless to get into these institutions and make real change. You will know the only really detailed, specific proposal for mandatory reporting is that that has been prepared by Mandate Now. It has already been submitted to the inquiry.
I have not mentioned Jonathan West. I will mention this lastly. He summarises the importance of mandatory reporting in the context of this case study very, very well in his blog. He says: "Mandatory reporting would make it almost impossible for a long-running situation, such as occurred at St Benedict's, to happen. First, there will inevitably be a greater climate of awareness, making reporting more likely, and, second, no head teacher is going to risk being prosecuted for suppressing a report of somebody else abusing. These two factors would make it extremely dangerous for abusers to operate in schools. They won't dare. Abuse will be prevented as a result."
To conclude: A8, in his evidence on Monday, said the reason he'd come to give evidence to the inquiry, was out of a sense of duty to the boys who can't be here today. I say that since World War II we reckon hundreds of boys were molested at St Benedict's. Just at St Benedict's. He went on to say: "If this country had had mandatory reporting like the mandatory reporting legislation currently in draft, hundreds of those boys wouldn't have been abused."