Master dubbed ‘Pervy Piers’
FATHER Piers Grant-Ferris was known as ‘Pervy Piers’ by the young boys he abused.
He joined the teaching staff at Gilling Castle, a prestigious preparatory school for Ampleforth College, in 1966 and immediately began assaulting pupils.
Victims recall how he would beat boys for sexual gratification. Sometimes he would walk around the tables at meal times and tap a boy on the shoulder, choosing him to be his next victim.
One boy was made to remove his clothes in the confessional of the chapel where he was beaten. Another time he was made to straddle a bath naked and was beaten while the priest performed a sex act.
A ten-year-old was assaulted in a locker room in front of other children and made to bend over a bed while his bottom was fondled.
In 1975, the then Abbot Basil Hume received a complaint from the parents of a pupil and an internal investigation revealed GrantFerris had assaulted eight other children, but the school did not refer any of the complaints to the statutory authorities.
Instead, the abbot had him assessed by a consultant psychiatrist, Dr Seymour Spencer, who said it would be fine for him to carry on teaching until the end of the academic year, despite the priest admitting his ‘use’ of boys for sexual stimulation in spanking.
After Dr Spencer said the matter should be hushed up, Father Piers was moved to various other parishes, where he continued to work with children.
Dr Spencer was subsequently regularly called upon by the abbots of Ampleforth and also Downside to assess monks accused of child sexual abuse.