UK inquiry recommends monks surrender power at abuse controversy school

Monks must be stripped of control at a leading Catholic school after decades of child sex abuse, an independent inquiry said today.

Monks must be stripped of control at a leading Catholic school in England after decades of child sex abuse, an independent inquiry said today.

Chiefs of St Benedict’s School in Ealing, London, offered a “heartfelt apology for past failures” as a top QC called for its independence.

MP Alex Carlile detailed 21 separate abuse cases since 1970 under Ealing Abbey’s watch.

“I have come to the firm conclusion... that the form of governance of St Benedict’s School is wholly outdated and demonstrably unacceptable,” Carlile writes in his independent report into safeguarding and child safety.

“The abbot himself has accepted that it is ’opaque to outsiders’.”

The crimes of Father David Pearce – jailed for a catalogue of abuse against five boys over a period of 36 years – illustrate how “St Benedict’s rule of love and forgiveness appears to have overshadowed responsibility for children’s welfare”.

The report added: “In a school where there has been abuse, mostly – but not exclusively – as a result of the activities of the monastic community, any semblance of a conflict of interest, of lack of independent scrutiny, must be removed.”