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New pupils barred from top UK Catholic school after
appalling child sexual abuse
Ampleforth college says it will appeal against education secretary’s decision
Ampleforth college and abbey in North Yorkshire, where ‘appalling sexual abuse [was] inflicted over decades on children as young as seven’, according to a 2018 report. Photograph: Alamy
Mattha Busby, The Guardian
Sat 28 Nov 2020 15.01 GMT
The government has ordered one of England’s most prestigious Catholic boarding schools, Ampleforth college, to stop admitting new pupils as a result of “very serious” failings.
Scandal has surrounded the private school in recent years and an independent inquiry into child sexual abuse published a highly critical report in August 2018 that said “appalling sexual abuse [was] inflicted over decades on children as young as seven”.
Ampleforth’s abbot, Cuthbert Madden, was removed from the post that year following allegations that he indecently assaulted pupils. Madden has denied the claims.
His replacement, Deirdre Rowe, stood down as acting head after 10 months in the role following the release of a highly critical inspection report that found the school did not meet standards for safeguarding, leadership, behaviour, combating bullying and complaints handling.
The Department for Education (DfE) has now launched enforcement action against the 200-year-old institution in North Yorkshire after ruling it had failed to meet safeguarding and leadership standards following an emergency Ofsted inspection.
Ampleforth has said it will appeal against the ruling because, it argues, the order is “unjustified and based on incorrect information”.
The letter, which was published by the DfE on Friday, highlighted concerns from a number of inspection reports from January 2016 onwards.
“The SoS [secretary of state, Gavin Williamson] also had regard to the fact that the school is failing to meet the ISS [independent school standards], including standards relating to safeguarding and leadership and management, and in his view, these failings are considered to be very serious,” it said.
The letter acknowledged the school had shown “some willingness” to improve since 2018, but Williamson ruled the school’s progress had been “too slow” and “insufficient”.
It said: “The school failed to meet the ISS for more than a year before new leadership was brought in. In the year since then, the school has still not done enough to consistently meet the ISS, and in some respects the school appears to have relapsed.”
The letter added: “The St Laurence Education Trust, the proprietor of Ampleforth college, is required to cease to admit any new students.”
A spokesperson for the college said it had noted the department’s intent to serve notice of an enforcement action. “We will be appealing this on the basis that we believe, and have been advised, that it is unjustified and based on incorrect information,” the spokesperson said.
“Given the very considerable steps forward that have been taken by the school to learn from the mistakes of the past and to put in place a robust safeguarding regime, a new senior leadership team, and a new governance structure that has effectively separated the abbey from the college, we cannot understand why this decision has been taken, and we cannot understand why it has been published, given the appeals process is still open to us.
“As far as we are concerned, we will continue to educate our students to the very high standards they are used to in a safe and supportive environment. We have lodged a complaint to Ofsted and await the outcome of that complaint.”
A damning government-ordered independent inquiry into child sexual abuse this month found that between 1970 and 2015, the Catholic church in England and Wales received more than 900 complaints involving more than 3,000 instances of child sexual abuse, made against more than 900 individuals, including priests, monks and volunteers.
When complaints were made, the church invariably failed to support victims and survivors but took action to protect alleged perpetrators by moving them to a different parish. “Child sexual abuse,” the report said, “was swept under the carpet.”
Father Woody Among 9 Additional Priests Named
In New Colorado Child Sex Abuse Report
By Anica Padilla, CBS Denver
December 1, 2020 at 12:20 pm
DENVER (CBS4) – Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser on Tuesday released more details on the state’s investigation into the sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests. Nine new names were released, including the late Rev. Charles B. Woodrich, better known as Father Woody, who served in the Denver Archdiocese. Woodrich is known for his work with the homeless community in Denver, and was described by some as the “patron saint of the poor, hungry and homeless.” He started Samaritan Shelter in November 1986 and died in 1991.
Last October, CBS4 reported on childhood sex abuse by Catholic priests in Colorado between 1951 and 1999. In addition to identifying the nine priests, Tuesday’s supplemental report identified 46 additional victims.
“All these cases of abuse happened between 1951 and 1999. And they were committed by 25 priests, either in the Denver Archdiocese or the Pueblo Diocese,” Weiser stated. Sixteen of those priests were previously identified, nine are new.
“Of the newly identify priests, five of them were in Denver and four in Pueblo,” Weiser stated.
Weiser said 16 of the 46 newly reported victims were abused after the relevant diocese already knew that there was a priest who was an abuser.
The total from the two reports is 212 substantiated incidents committed by 52 diocesan priests.
The new report states that Father Woody had three male victims between 1976 and 1989. One victim was groomed and abused over a six-year period, starting when he was 12 years old. He said the abuse included touching and oral sex. Another said he was served alcohol and woke up later wearing little clothing. He was 15 or 16 years old at the time.
The Archdiocese of Denver released a statement on the supplemental report, that read, in part:
“For Catholics, learning about the past sins of former priests has been extremely difficult, especially when the priest was well-known and respected. For any priest that has been named in the initial report or supplemental report, the archdiocese has removed that priest’s name from any honorary designation including buildings, facilities, and programs.”
The Denver priests are Father Kenneth Funk, Father Daniel Kelleher, Father James Moreno, Father Gregory Smith and Father Charles Woodrich. The newly-named Pueblo priests are Monsignor Marvin Kapushion, Father Duane Repola, Father Carlos Trujillo and Father Joseph Walsh.
How Much Has The US Catholic Church Paid To Abuse Victims?
by Roy D. Oppenheim
Lawyers.com
Posted on December 02, 2020
The Turning Point for Justice | Sexual Abuse and the Catholic Church
“Now we know the truth: it happened everywhere.” This quote is from the first paragraph of the 2018 report that first brought to light a substantial amount of names of sexual predators in the Catholic Church. The report by the Dioceses responsible for these predators prompted others to do the same. Two years later, just the Dioceses of California and New York alone, have released the names of more than 1,200 members of the clergy who have been deemed “credibly accused.” Given the new handling of sexual abusers in the ranks of the Church, the governments of California and New York have partially lifted what is perhaps the biggest obstacle for victims that seek to obtain justice: the statute of limitations.
Catholic church sex abuse allegations
The Catalyst
In 2018, a grand jury investigating the extent of sexual abuse of minors in the Catholic Church, from a court in Pennsylvania, showed in its nearly 900-page long report that just from the Church’s records alone, more than 1,000 victims could be identified. Although there are presumably more victims and abusers out there, the report could only confirm the names of 300 abusers. Nevertheless, two months after the report was released only two priests were charged.
Catholic Church Lawsuit
Some of these cases go back as far as the 1940s which unfortunately means that, until recently, the victims could not file a lawsuit because of the statute of limitations in place for sexual abuse cases regarding minors. Statutes of limitations can either set a limit on the maximum age a victim can have to file a complaint, or a maximum period of time that can pass after the assault. Nevertheless, recent developments indicate that history will not repeat itself.
Sex abuse scandal in catholic church
Learning from Mistakes
This report led to a wave of other Dioceses to report the names of clergy that could be deemed “credibly accused.” ProPublica, a New York based non-profit focused on investigative journalism, has compiled all the names that have been reported by Dioceses nationwide. This list contains the names of more than 6,700 sexual predators, of which more than 1,200 are from California and New York alone. Looking at the Archdiocese of New York as an example, approximately three-quarters of predators were ordained between 1908 and 1969, which resembles the situation in Pennsylvania where the sexual assaults probably happened so long ago they can no longer be presented to the court. However, both the governments of California and New York have taken steps to ensure this is not the case in order to avoid what happened previously.
US Catholic Church Spent $281,611,817 on child sex abuse cases in 2019 According to a yearly audit of the Catholic Church by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Why You Should Act Now
Last year, both New York and California changed the statute of limitations they had in place for sexual abuse of minors. California now allows victims to file claims until the age of 40, or 5 years after the abuse. Previously the law required claims to be filed before the victim turns 26 years old, or 3 years after the abuse. New York took a more drastic measure, allowing victims as old as 55 years of age to file a complaint, where originally it was limited to victims younger than 23. The real beacon of hope for victims, however, is the new limited period of time where anyone can file a complaint against their childhood sexual abuser, regardless of how long ago the incident happened. California is giving victims 3 years to file their claim, until January 2023, while New York is just giving two years, extending its original deadline by one year until August 2021.
A new report from U.S. Roman Catholic bishops tallies 4,434 sex abuse allegations against church clergy in the audit year through last June — triple the number from the previous year (Courtesy The Associated Press)
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Loophole robs victims of justice in Fla church abuse scandal
By Katie LaGrone | December 2, 2020 at 8:53 AM
Eugene Rosenquest is a church abuse survivor and was disappointed to hear last month that Florida’s Attorney General’s office ended its investigation into sexual abuse by Catholic priests without a single prosecution.
“It’s difficult enough to be violated and then it's further difficult to have everyone turn their back on you and say that’s law life,” he said.
Sexually abused when he was a teen living in New York, Rosenquest now leads a Florida support group for survivors of priest abuse.
Last month, Florida's Attorney General (AG) issued a report announcing while it received nearly 300 tips and identified nearly 100 priests with Florida ties accused of past abuse, the AG's office was barred from criminally prosecuting any of them because either the priest in question died or the statute of limitations had already expired.
Rosenquest believes the statute of limitations is being used as an unintended loophole for abusers to evade justice.
I seriously doubt that it was 'unintended' at all.
It’s also one state lawmakers have yet to fully fix. Despite years of efforts and some new laws adopted in the past decade, currently, in Florida, adults who were sexually abused as a child more than 10 years ago still can’t civilly sue their abusers.
In New York, lawmakers passed a measure that gives child sex abuse victims until the age of 55 to seek civil justice.
Earlier this year, Florida lawmakers passed, "Donna's Law," which eliminates the statute of limitations on criminally prosecuting certain kinds of sexual battery cases. But as part of its passage, FL Representative Tracie Davis of Jacksonville who co-sponsored the bill, said a number of compromises were made including removing the retroactive part of the bill. As a result, adult victims of church abuse when they were minors aren't protected under the new law.
“We had members in the Senate who did not feel that someone who had been sexually abused could remember all the details of that assault,” she said. Davis said she will be discussing how to reintroduce making the law retroactive after hearing about Catholic Church sex abuse victims still seeking justice in Florida when other states have already passed measures enabling them to take civil recourse.
Is it necessary to remember 'all the details'? I remember many details of my own abuse, 69 years ago.
Senator Lauren Book introduced a bill last session that would have given sexual abuse victims a one-year “lookback window” to file civil action but that bill went nowhere. As a survivor of childhood sexual abuse [unrelated to the Catholic church] Book has championed a number of laws advocating for victims' rights.
After decades of suffering, Eugene Rosenquest is finally in the process of getting justice for his abuse by the Catholic Church in New York. But here in Florida, where he now lives, others like him are left still waiting for their chance.
“In the long-term, it’s got to change,” Rosenquest said.
How many Florida law-makers are getting financial support from the Catholic Church?
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Former Catholic priest and tutor convicted of historic child sex offences in Warwick
Coventry telegraph
A man has been convicted of non-recent child sex offences dating back to when police say he worked as a priest and private tutor.
Joseph Quigley, 56, of Church Lane in Stone, Staffordshire was arrested and charged as part of a Warwickshire Police investigation.
Quigley was found guilty by a majority jury on Thursday (December 3) following his trial at Warwick Crown Court of four counts of engaging in sexual activity with a child, two counts of sexual assault, two counts of false imprisonment and one count of child cruelty.
The offences took place in Warwick, between 2006 and 2009 against one male victim when he was aged between 14 and 16.
At the time the offences occurred, police say that Quigley was working in a position of trust as a priest and private tutor.
Quigley has been remanded in custody and will be sentenced at Warwick Crown Court on January 29, 2021.
Following today's outcome, investigating officer Detective Sergeant Abigail Simpson from the Warwickshire Police Criminal Investigations Department said: “Joseph Quigley held a prestigious role and a position of trust within the community at the time the offences were committed, a position he abused by preying on a vulnerable child, grooming him and subjecting him to physical and sexual abuse over a number of years.
"I would like to pay tribute to the victim and witnesses who came forward and gave evidence against him. Thanks to their bravery, Quigley has now been convicted of his appalling crimes and will face justice for his actions, and hopefully this will now give the victim some sense of closure.
The Courier
The disgraced former national education advisor for Roman Catholic schools sexually and physically abused a boy while he was a parish priest at a church in the Warwick area.
As well as sexual abuse, Father Joseph Quigley beat the boy with a hurling stick and locked him in the cold and dark crypt.
He was forced to resign in disgrace, prosecutor Adrian Langdale QC told a jury at Warwick Crown Court.
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