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Yorkshire Post Today
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Mark Branagan
PUPILS at a leading Roman Catholic school suffered decades of abuse from at least six paedophiles following a decision by former Abbot Basil Hume not to call in police at the beginning of the scandal.
Hume, the future Cardinal and guiding light of Catholicism in Britain, was Abbot of Ampleforth Abbey in North Yorkshire when he received a complaint from parents in 1975 about Father Piers Grant-Ferris, the son of a Tory peer.
It was alleged that Grant-Ferris – son of the former Deputy Speaker of the House of Commons, Lord Harvington – had "inappropriately touched" a boy at Ampleforth College's former prep school, Gilling Castle.
Hume dealt with the matter internally by moving Grant-Ferris from Gilling Castle, where he was second year form master, to Workington parish in Cumbria.