UNITED KINGDOM
Christian Today
James Macintyre 06 April 2017
A monk who is said to have run a weekly ‘sex club’ for young boys was allowed to remain at the country’s leading Catholic school after multiple misconduct allegations against him, The Times has reported.
Former pupils of the Ampleforth College in Yorkshire, a £30,000-per-year private school, told police that they were summoned in their pyjamas to the study of Father Jeremy Sierla, where they were given alcohol and said to have performed sex acts.
A criminal inquiry began in 2004 resulting in no charges, but police were so concerned by the risk the monk posed that they wrote to the Department for Education the following year, asking that he be denied access to children.
Detectives believed that he should not be allowed ‘anywhere near a school’. But, with the approval of child protection professionals, he lived at Ampleforth and worked at its shop until 2012.
During this time he was in proximity to pupils before being removed when education officials ruled that his presence was ‘incompatible with good safeguarding practice’.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.