Top School Suspends Head of Music after Sex Claims Revealed

By Andrew Norfolk
The Times
March 3, 2017

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/top-school-suspends-its-head-of-music-after-sex-claims-revealed-b3c5xnbfs?shareToken=40949d70bdc66135b64d1b3616abe0b9

Sean Farrell joined Wellington College in 2010. He faces sex abuse charges dating from the 1980s

A man accused of several sex offences against a 12-year-old boy is head of music at a top public school, it can be revealed after a gagging order was lifted.

Sean Farrell’s role at Wellington College, in Crowthorne, Berkshire, was kept secret when he appeared before magistrates last week.

He is charged with sex crimes said to have been committed in North Yorkshire three decades ago against a pupil at Ampleforth College, a leading Roman Catholic school.

Reporters and the public were ordered to leave the court in York last Thursday before Deputy District Judge Edward Barr banned the media from revealing where and in what role Mr Farrell was employed.

The restriction had been requested by his former wife. It was overturned yesterday after a challenge by The Times, which said that Judge Barr had no power to make it.

Mr Farrell, 49, is a former Ampleforth pupil and his alleged victim was at Gilling Castle, the college’s prep school at which Mr Farrell had been a student music teacher between 1985 and 1986.

He later studied music at the University of York and the Royal Academy of Music before serving as assistant organist at Wakefield, Ely and Rochester cathedrals in the 1990s.

Mr Farrell, a fellow of the Royal College of Organists, was director of performance at Trinity College of Music, in London, from 2001 to 2009. He joined Wellington in 2010 as organist, choirmaster and head of music.

His prosecution is the latest in a series of cases in which monks and former members of staff at Ampleforth, Britain’s largest Benedictine community, have been accused of sex crimes against boys.

Last December the Charity Commission announced an inquiry into the school’s “approach to safeguarding and its handling of allegations of sexual abuse”. It was launched after The Times revealed that the school had covered up a potential scandal in 1989 when 11 pupils were said to have complained that they had been touched, stroked and kissed by Paul Sheppard, a teacher.

Mr Sheppard was asked to leave but police were not informed and he was given glowing references. He went on to teach at schools in seven countries. In 2015 he was cleared of sexually abusing a pupil.

Since 1996, three Ampleforth monks and a lay teacher have been convicted of crimes against more than 30 pupils, from the 1960s to the 1990s.

The school faces scrutiny this year when its handling of such cases is publicly examined. The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse has announced that institutions run by the English Benedictine Congregation, including Ampleforth, will feature at a hearing in December.

Mr Farrell is charged with two offences of gross indecency with a boy aged under 14 and two of indecent assault against the same boy. He is due to appear at York crown court on March 24, and has indicated that he will deny all the charges against him.

In a statement Wellington said that Mr Farrell had been suspended and “excluded from the school site” as soon as it became aware of the police investigation.

Ampleforth said that it accepted responsibility for past failings and works closely with the safeguarding authorities.