Benedictine Monks Are to Investigate Abuse Claims

Scottish Catholic Observer
August 2, 2013

http://www.sconews.co.uk/news/30414/benedictine-monks-are-to-investigate-abuse-claims/

The head of the UK’s largest group of Benedictine congregations has said he intends to co-operate fully with a police investigation into allegations of abuse at a boarding school in the Highlands that was run by his order.

A spokesman for the Scottish Catholic Church said he was horrified by the allegations made in a BBC documentary this week but stressed events at the schools fell out with the jurisdiction of the Scottish Catholic Church and hierarchy.

Dom Richard Yeo, abbot president of the English Congregation of Benedictines, said allegations of abuse, at the monk run schools Fort Augustus (below) in the Highlands and Carlekemp Priory School near Edinburgh had appalled him and he was ‘very sorry for any abuse that happened’.’

Dom Yeo said he was also liaising with senior figures in the Scottish Catholic safeguarding office, an agency of the Church that oversees child protection policy within the Church. Once the police inquiry was complete, he said, the Benedictines were likely to conduct their own investigation. He said that he had been aware of a few cases of alleged abuses at Fort Augustus made by some individuals over the past three years.