Abbot ‘covered up’ sex abuse at school

THE abbot in charge of one of Britain’s leading Catholic boarding schools is accused of covering up abuse by one of its priests for decades after taking legal advice, the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) has heard.

Abbot Richard Yeo was in charge of Downside Abbey, in Somerset, when allegations against Richard White – a geography teacher otherwise known as Father Nicholas White – were first made.

However, rather than reporting the matter to the police, the abbot consulted lawyers to check whether he was legally compelled to report the complaints. When he discovered he was not, the matter was brushed under the carpet and White was sheltered for years by the church, before eventually being arrested in 2010.

White was jailed for five years in 2012, but lawyers for some of his victims said the failure to make non-reporting of suspected abuse a crime, had let clerics such as White evade justice for decades.

IICSA is holding three weeks of hearings into abuse at Benedictine schools.

Richard Scorer, of the law firm Slater and Gordon, who is representing 27 participants, said there were many examples where the Catholic Church had been more concerned with its reputation than the welfare of victims.

Mr Scorer said: “The reputational pressures [and] the cultural and theological factors which led to abuse being covered up in Catholic institutions have not gone away.”

Abbot Yeo is due to give evidence to the inquiry.