Court to hear historic sex abuse allegations against Mirfield priests

By Neil Atkinson
Huddersfield Examiner
July 29, 2015

http://www.examiner.co.uk/news/west-yorkshire-news/court-hear-historic-sex-abuse-9753612

The Mirfield Junior Seminary run by the Vernoa Fathers at Roe Head, Mirfield.

Kevin Scullin, who claims he was a victim of sexual abuse at the Mirfield Junior Seminary run by the Verona Fathers, pictured there in 1967

Evidence of historic sexual abuse at a Kirklees religious school will be considered in court for the first time later this year.

Numerous allegations of horrific abuse by priests and teachers working for the Verona Fathers at St Peter Claver College, Mirfield, have been made in recent years.

However, despite £120,000 in compensation payouts, the cases have not reached court and there has been no apology or finding of guilt.

But a case will finally be tried in November, after former pupil Peter Murray, 57, launched his bid for a substantial damages payout.

The Liverpool-born nurse is suing the Verona Fathers, the religious order behind the college, for the abuse he says he suffered.

The High Court heard Mr Murray went to the seminary, at Roe Head, hoping to become a priest, when he was only 11. The seminary has now closed and became Holly Bank.

There, he says, he was subjected to a campaign of abuse at the hands of a teacher - the now dead Michael Ribble.

‘Our case is this is someone who has been sexually abused as a child and still suffers the implications of it today,’ his barrister Mary O’Rourke QC said.

‘He never got to follow through his vocation, because he became messed up and mixed up.’

He had not only been abused himself, but had also walked in on another pupil being molested, she added.

In a preliminary hearing, Mr Justice William Davis read out some of the medical evidence which will be central in the case.

The alleged abuse, which took place at a crucial point in his emotional development, had left him with ‘distorted notions of intimacy’, he said.

The court heard Mr Murray detailed what he says happened to him in a series of diaries at the time and in an autobiography published last year.

He grew up in West Derby, Liverpool, before going to the school in Yorkshire. Unable to progress into the priesthood, he instead became a nurse.

The Verona Fathers will contest liability in the trial, which is currently scheduled for mid-November.