Third Ampleforth monk convicted of abusing pupils

BY SIMON CALDWELL
A PRIEST has admitted abusing boys at a Catholic school at a time when the late Cardinal Basil Hume was in charge of the monastic community to which he belonged.
Fr Piers Grant-Ferris, 72, pleaded guilty at Leeds Crown Court to indecently assaulting 15 boys while teaching at Gilling Castle, North Yorkshire, the preparatory school for nearby Ampleforth College, between 1966 and 1975.
Both schools are run by the Benedictine monks of Ampleforth Abbey, where Hume was abbot from 1963 to 1976.
Grant-Ferris denied six counts of indecent assault and one of gross indecency but admitted a series of assaults on boys all under 12 years old.
They included fondling, smacking and stroking of bare buttocks, striking one boy on his bare buttocks with a stick, and carrying out an anal inspection of another boy.
Nine former pupils said that Grant-Ferris improperly inserted a thermometer into their bodies.
The priest was granted conditional bail by Judge Ian Dobkin on the grounds that he lived and slept at Ampleforth Abbey but he was told during the hearing last week that he could face jail when he returned to the court to be sentenced next year, pending probation and psychiatric reports.
North Yorkshire police, which has conducted a 15month inquiry into allegations of abuse at Ampleforth, claim Hume knew by 1975 that Grant-Ferris was a risk to pupils and acted according to the norms of the period.
The matter was reported neither to the police nor to social services and Grant-Ferris was instead sent by Hume to work at a parish in Cumbria. He returned to the abbey in 1989. “It was a very different time,” Detective Superintendent Barry Honeysett told the Guardian. “We are judging past actions by current standards.” Asource close to Ampleforth said that Hume knew of two complaints against Grant-Ferris and “acted on them”. He said Hume, who died of cancer in June 1999, was probably unaware of the offences to which Grant-Ferris pleaded guilty.
Anthony Howard, author of Basil Hume: The Monk Cardinal, the official biography of Hume that was published this summer, said that he uncovered no evidence that Hume was aware of child abuse at Ampleforth.“All I know about Ampleforth is that he did employ a psychiatrist from Oxford who went up there I think twice a year,” he said. “I always suspected that Basil was lucky because nothing came out when he was alive but quite a lot of cases have come out that occurred during his tenure.
“As far as I know, there was no scandal in all the years that Basil was there as abbot. I am sure that things do go back to Basil’s time.” The conviction of GrantFerris, son of Lord Harvington, a wartime fighter pilot and former Conservative Deputy Speaker of the House of Commons, is the second successful child abuse prosecution of an Ampleforth monk this year.
Just three months ago Fr Gregory Carroll was jailed for four years after he pleaded guilty to abusing 10 boys between 1979 and 1987. York Crown Court heard that he had admitted to abusing five other boys in the 1970s. Athird monk, Fr Bernard Green was arrested, after he indecently assaulted a sleeping 13-year-old boy in 1995 and placed on probation for two years.
In October 2000 Frank Hopkinson, the retired former head of school’s finance department, was sent to jail for a year after he downloaded 836 indecent images of children. He had worked at the school for 40 years and had been previously jailed for sexual offences against a 14-year-old boy.
Ampleforth College and Gilling Castle are independent schools which are run by the monks of the abbey. The college, which has a Benedictine priest as headmaster, charges fees of more than £20,000 a year.
Fr Cuthbert Madden, the abbot of Ampleforth, offered a “heartfelt apology” to the victims of Grant-Ferris and said that strict child protection measures have been introduced to the schools. “Today our schools have a framework of reporting, monitoring and pastoral supervision which provide safeguards for child protection almost unrecognisable from those applying in the old days,” he said.