Sexual abuse ‘continued thanks to denial’
EALING ABBEY AND ST BENEDICT’S SCHOOL HAD COVER-UP CULTURE
SERIOUS sexual abuse at a £17.5k-a year Ealing private school was an “open secret” and was allowed to continue for decades thanks to successive failings of senior management, a new report has found.
The Independent Inquiry Into Child Sexual Assault (IICSA)’s report on Ealing Abbey and St Benedict’s School, an independent Catholic school was published on October 24.
It found the sexual abuse, which was carried out from at least the 1970s until 2008, was facilitated by a “culture of cover-up and denial” at the school and the neighbouring Ealing Abbey.
Staff who reported concerns told the inquiry that it felt like going up against “the mafia”.
One senior school figure, David Pearce, was allowed to carry on interacting with pupils at the school despite admitting abusing a boy during a civil trial in 2006, the report shows.
The boy told the inquiry “he found these incidents deeply distressing and he tried to commit suicide when he was just 10 years old”.
According to testimony heard by the inquiry, knowledge of Pearce’s abuse was widespread among the pupils.
A former pupil said: “The days when he took us swimming were known as ‘gay days…’ We all used to rush to change at the end of the swimming lessons as quickly as possible because we all felt uncomfortable being stared at by Pearce and we did not want to be selected to be dried by him… One of the occasions when Pearce ‘dried me’ he touched my genitals with his bare hands under the towel.”
He continued: “I felt very uncomfortable… but obviously I had no choice but to obey him as he was both a priest and the headmaster.”
In the same year as a civil court ruled against Pearce, he started to sexually abuse a 16-year-old, a crime he was later convicted for.
In 2008 Pearce was finally arrested and convicted of sexual and indecent assault. He was sentenced to eight years in prison but this was reduced to five years on appeal in 2010.
The report described the atmosphere at the school as “sadistic and predatory with a culture of excessive corporal punishment”.
Since 2003, two senior figures at the school,
Laurence Soper and David Pearce, and two lay teachers, John Maestri and Stephen Skelton, have been convicted of multiple offences involving sexual abuse of over 20 children. The abuse happened between at least the 1970s and 2008.
An independent review into safeguarding at the school was conducted by Lord Carlile of Berriew QC.
His 2011 report recommended the school and the abbey were formally separated to ensure the school could sufficiently protect the children.
This was formally enacted in 2012 but despite this problems persisted at the school.
In 2016 the deputy head Peter Allott was convicted for possessing indecent images of children.
Abbot Martin Shipperlee, who resigned in February this year following the IICSA hearings, said: “As the IICSA hearings have shown, there has been a series of serious failings in safeguarding and some of those failings have been mine.
“Much has been achieved to correct this in recent years and I have confidence in the present structures and policies.
“However this does not take away from the seriousness of what went before.”
But it wasn’t just the head of the abbey.
According to the report, Christopher Cleugh, headmaster at the school between January 2002 and August 2016, “repeatedly minimised questions of child sexual abuse to the point of materially misrepresenting facts”.
Soper was given an 18-year prison sentence in 2017 for 19 counts of indecent and serious sexual assault – including rape – against ten boys at the school between 1972 and 1983.
He was head of the middle school but also worked his way up to become Abbot, the highest role in the abbey.
One of the survivors attended St Benedict’s in the 1960s and 1970s. Soper, then Abbot of Ealing , was found guilty in 2017 of raping him on multiple occasions.
As an adult he resorted to excessive drinking and became homeless. He attempted suicide and was sectioned due to his mental health problems.
He said: “I often wonder what my life would have been like if I hadn’t been abused… I feel like I am still in a black hole and just can’t climb out of it. I don’t think I can ever put down in words fully what [Soper] has done to me. He has damaged me for life and I am afraid that that damage will never go away.”
In a statement the IICSA said: “The total scale of abuse can never be known, but it is likely to be much greater.”
A new abbot was elected in 2019. The report stated: “It remains to be seen whether Ealing Abbey proves itself capable in the future of ensuring proper safeguarding of children at risk.”