Police Investigate Sex Abuse Allegations against Catholic Priests in Mirfield

Dewsbury Reporter
October 7, 2013

http://www.dewsburyreporter.co.uk/news/local/police-investigate-sex-abuse-allegations-against-catholic-priests-in-mirfield-1-6008958

Police are investigating allegations of sexual abuse at a former seminary in Mirfield.

Several men have claimed they were abused by Catholic priests at St Peter’s Seminary in Mirfield in the 1960s and 1970s.

Some are preparing civil cases against the order which ran the school at Roe Head.

And a formal complaint by at least one person has been made to West Yorkshire Police.

Allegations of abuse by members of the Verona Fathers have been made on several websites.

One man wrote: “I was at Mirfield in the early sixties. My whole time there was a non-stop series of mental, emotional, physical and, on two occasions, sexual abuse by the priests, coupled with total neglect of all the boys, who were left to their own devices to cope with the problems produced by the abuse.”

Another said: “I thought a priest could do no wrong – and so I let him just do what he did. It was years later that I realised I was being sexually abused.”

A spokeswoman for the Verona Fathers said they had been alerted to a blog containing allegations last year.

She said: “They were concerned and very dismayed to hear of the alleged incidents of sexual and physical abuse amidst the positive memories on the blog.

She said members of the order would help the police in any way they could if they made contact.

The Verona Fathers ran St Peter’s between 1960 and 1984, but no longer runs any seminaries in the UK.

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