Monk Accused of Running Sex Club Allowed to Stay at Ampleforth College

Andrew Norfolk, Chief Investigative Reporter
The Times

Father Jeremy Sierla denied allegations of sexual assault and was never prosecuted

A monk said to have run a weekly “sex club” for young boys was allowed to remain at the country’s leading Roman Catholic school after multiple misconduct allegations against him.

Former pupils of the £30,000-a-year Ampleforth College told police that they were summoned in their pyjamas to Father Jeremy Sierla’s study, where they were given alcohol and said to have performed sex acts.

A criminal inquiry began in 2004 but no charges resulted. However, police were so concerned by the risk the monk posed that they wrote to the Department for Education the following year, asking that he be denied access to children.

Detectives believed that he should not be allowed “anywhere near a school”, but, with the approval of child protection professionals, he lived at Ampleforth and worked at its shop until 2012, during which time he was in proximity to pupils. He was removed when education officials ruled his presence “incompatible with good safeguarding practice”.

Ambleforth College, Britain's leading Catholic College

The criminal investigation started after a man claimed that Father Jeremy had subjected him to sexual assaults when he was a pupil at Ampleforth’s Junior House in the early 1990s.

Sources revealed that when officers examined the monk’s computer, he was found to have posed online as a teenage girl to contact young males in internet chatrooms. Police also seized a photograph of the former pupil, aged 12 at the time, who triggered the inquiry.

The case raises questions about why Father Jeremy was not prosecuted in 2004 and why he stayed at Ampleforth until 2012. The school said it was “committed to ensuring the safety and welfare of each and every pupil in its care”.

Father Jeremy, 59, who now lives in a closed religious order, said that he has “always denied any wrongdoing” and “gladly co-operated when asked to do so by the authorities”.

Since 1996 three Ampleforth monks and a lay teacher have been convicted of historical sex crimes against more than 30 boys. The school’s handling of such cases will be examined this year at a public hearing of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse.