We can’t take blame for abuse, says monk

THE head of a Catholic order which staffed a Highland boarding school has claimed it cannot be held responsible for abuse suffered by pupils there.

Monks of the English Benedictine Congregation (EBC) ran Fort Augustus Abbey School from 1923 until it closed in 1993.

Former pupils have claimed they suffered beatings and sexual abuse at the Inverness-shire school, as well as its feeder school – Carlekemp Priory in North Berwick, East Lothian.

But at the ongoing Child Abuse Inquiry in Edinburgh yesterday, the Right Reverend Dom Richard Yeo, abbot president of the EBC, denied the group could answer for the monks’ conduct at the time.

He offered his apologies to victims but distanced the EBC from the school, saying it was solely an abbey-run institution. The monks left Fort Augustus Abbey five years after the school closed.

In a report presented to the inquiry, Dom Yeo wrote: ‘At no time did EBC have any control over or responsibility for the constitution, management or operation of Fort Augustus Abbey.

‘The congregation did not govern the abbey. Fort Augustus had complete autonomy in relation to the provision of residential care for children.’

He admitted that the role of abbott president, which he took on in 2001, was to ensure the abbeys were being run correctly.

But in relation to the running of the Highland abbey and school at that time he said: ‘The abbot is responsible.’

He said the EBC ‘has no remit or authority to acknowledge or accept abuse on behalf of the former Fort Augustus Abbey’, and added: ‘I can’t speak for the school.’ When asked who could answer for the abuse he replied: ‘Nobody. The redress any survivors of abuse will have is going to be limited.’

Dom Yeo told the inquiry: ‘There seems to have been a policy that when a monk died or left the monastery that his personnel file was destroyed.

‘It’s not practice in monasteries that I know about.’

But he added: ‘Several pupils have come to me to inform me they have been abused and I have told them that I believe them and I am sorry about it.’

The inquiry also heard evidence from the Church of Scotland.

Vivienne Dickenson, director of children and family services for CrossReach, the social care arm of the Kirk, admitted that abuse – both physical and sexual – had taken place at a number of its institutions.

In relation to Geilsland School in Beith, Ayrshire, which closed in 2015, she said in a report submitted to the committee: ‘We accept that there were occasions when the nature and extent of physical punishments at Geilsland were excessive, even when measured by the standards of the time.’

She said ‘a number of pupils have made similar allegations of abuse against one individual’.

Miss Dickenson also discussed the Lord and Lady Polwarth Children’s Home in Edinburgh, where in 2013 a former employee of the Kirk was convicted of conducting 22 serious sex offences between 1975 and 1981.

She added: ‘We fully accept that the systems and processes did not protect the children in our care at that time.

‘If any child known or not known has been harmed in our care, we are deeply sorry.’

The inquiry continues.

‘Redress is going to be limited’