Paedophile monk sent away – with a cheque for £50,000

A PAEDOPHILE monk was sent abroad and given £50,000 by a Catholic religious order, an inquiry heard yesterday.

Dom Richard Yeo, 71, former boss of the Benedictines, said the monk left Fort Augustus Abbey School in Inverness-shire after he sexually abused a boy.

He admitted there ‘probably was a dysfunction’ at the nowclosed institution.

The monk, who cannot be named for legal reasons, left Scotland to work as a parish priest abroad in 1977.

The Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry (SCAI) in Edinburgh also heard Dom Yeo believed a ‘paedophile ring’ may have been at work among the monks.

Inquiry chairman Lady Smith suggested the monk was effectively ‘let loose’ – using the ‘front’ that he was going to look after his elderly parents.

It was only 36 years later, in 2013, that the church authorities in the country where he had been sent were told about the abuse he had committed.

The 2013 letter was sent to an archbishop in the country where the monk had been sent, apologising for not having mentioned the abuse sooner.

The SCAI was also told that in 2000 the Benedictine order in Scotland sent a cheque for £50,000 to the abuser to help with his living costs.

Asked about the £50,000 cheque, Dom Yeo said elderly monks were given money to look after themselves – but conceded that the senior monk who sent the money ‘would have done better to investigate the circumstances’.

The SCAI heard the abusive monk was later stripped of his priestly duties.

The inquiry continues.