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	Silence and Secrecy at School Where Child Sex Abuse Went on for Decades Yesterday's Revelations Cast a Cloud over the Late Cardinal Hume's Former Role at a Top Catholic College By Ian Cobain The Guardian [United Kingdom] November 18, 2005 In 1997, near the end of his life, Cardinal Basil Hume sat down to write a theology book for children, which he called Basil in Blunderland. Given that the book was aimed at very young children, the title of the final chapter - Death - must have surprised some of the cardinal's readers. These pages saw Cardinal Hume, the leader of 4 million Roman Catholics in England and Wales, anticipating his own passing. "In a very bad moment I think about the relief my demise will bring to some people," he wrote. "I do worry about the insensitive and clumsy ways I have handled some people, about my selfishness ..." Cardinal Hume did not explain further, but some former pupils at Ampleforth college, the country's most celebrated Catholic public school, may believe he was referring to them. For three decades between 1966 and 1995, a number of boys at the school endured sexual abuse at the hands of some of the monks who taught there, assaults that ranged from relatively minor incidents to, allegedly, rape. These were the decades during which Cardinal Hume was first the Abbot of Ampleforth, and then Archbishop of Westminster. Exactly how many young boys were abused is difficult to say. Police say they have identified between 30 and 40 victims, although former pupils estimate the true tally could reach three figures. Some of the victims at Ampleforth's prep school were less than 10 years old. "They felt, some of them, that it was inappropriate, but they didn't know how to complain," says Detective Superintendent Barry Honeysett, the North Yorkshire officer who led the 15-month investigation into the years of abuse. Today many of the victims are middle-aged, married and highly successful. Some are company directors, many are professionals, others hold prominent positions in the City, one is related to a member of the royal family. "The victims tend to be in their 40s with families who do not know what happened, and they want to keep it that way," says Det Supt Honeysett. Some victims traced by detectives were relieved to be able to talk about their ordeal. "It is something that has troubled them for many years. They have felt aggrieved about what has happened to them," said Det Supt Honeysett. Others, however, were anxious to put their experiences behind them. The abbey of Ampleforth, and the school which almost entirely surrounds it, has stood in a remote valley near Thirsk in North Yorkshire for 200 years. The school educates the children of many of Britain's wealthiest and most influential Roman Catholic families. The Benedictine community running the abbey and the school says its mission is the "spiritual, moral and intellectual" education of children who will become "inspired by high ideals and capable of leadership". Cardinal Hume spent most of his life at Ampleforth, arriving as a pupil at the age of 10 and leaving only when appointed Archbishop of Westminster in 1976, at the age of 52. In between, he was a novice, then a monk, was ordained, was a housemaster and taught rugby. After his election as abbot in 1963 he was responsible for running the school as well as the abbey, and police say they have established that by 1975 he was aware of the risk that at least one monk, Father Piers Grant-Ferris, posed to pupils. Yesterday Grant-Ferris, 72, pleaded guilty at Leeds crown court to abusing 15 boys at Ampleforth's prep school over a nine-year period up to 1975. Some of these boys, boarders aged between eight and 10, were beaten for his sexual gratification. While Cardinal Hume did banish Grant-Ferris, it is unclear why he failed to alert police and social services. Had he done so, police believe Ampleforth's boys may have been at far less risk of suffering the abuse that continued to be committed by a number of monks and lay staff over the next 20 years. "It was a very different time," says Det Supt Honeysett. "We are judging past actions by current standards." Some critics will claim Cardinal Hume was acting in accordance with a Vatican directive issued in 1962, which is said to have ordered the strictest secrecy in dealing with clerical abuse, on pain of excommunication. The Catholic church says this document has been misunderstood, and that it orders secrecy only during internal investigations. Yesterday the abbey insisted there was some doubt about what Cardinal Hume would have known about Grant-Ferris and his paedophilia, although police say the monk made a clear admission to his abbot. During the investigation they recovered papers which detail the school's knowledge of offences committed by a number of monks. There is other evidence that Cardinal Hume was prepared to put the reputation of the Catholic church before the interests of justice. A court in Leicester heard that before his death in 1999 he had offered a woman who was molested by a priest an unsolicited £1,500 "donation" towards counselling, and urged her not to contact police. The woman ignored him, and the priest was eventually jailed for six years for abusing her and three other women. It was 2003 before police saw signs of a problem at Ampleforth, and only yesterday that Grant-Ferris pleaded guilty. In September, another Ampleforth monk, Father Gregory Carroll, was jailed for four years after pleading guilty to abusing 10 boys between 1979 and 1987. York crown court heard that Carroll, 67, had admitted assaulting five other boys in the 1970s. Det Supt Honeysett says that the school failed to alert police to Carroll's offences after receiving a complaint in the 1990s, "by which time I think it was fairly clear that historic abuse cases should be brought to the attention of the statutory authorities". A third monk, Father Bernard Green, had been arrested shortly after he indecently assaulted a sleeping 13-year-old in 1995. He was placed on probation for two years after the court heard that the child had been "petrified" by the incident. In October 2000, Frank Hopkinson, retired former head of the school's finance department, was jailed for 12 months for downloading 836 indecent images of children. Hopkinson, who worked at the school for 40 years, had previously been jailed for sexual offences against a 14-year-old boy. Not all of Ampleforth's paedophiles have been brought to justice. Detectives heard allegations that three other men had also been sexually assaulting pupils. All three had died, however, by the time the years of abuse came to light. Father Cuthbert Madden, current abbot of Ampleforth, said yesterday that the abbey offered a "heartfelt apology" to the victims of Grant-Ferris. He added that there was now "a framework of reporting, monitoring and pastoral supervision which provides safeguards for child protection almost unrecognisable from those applying in those days". Other cases The most serious scandals recently faced by the Catholic church: US: Priests suspended, some jailed, three bishops forced to resign, and three dioceses bankrupted by compensation claims. Ireland: An inquiry into allegations of abuse by 67 priests in Dublin opened this month. An inquiry into abuse by around 20 priests at Ferns concluded negligence went as far as the Vatican. France: A bishop was given a suspended sentence for failing to inform police that a priest in his diocese had admitted sexual abuse.
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