By Anna Richardson
News & Star [United Kingdom]
April 29, 2006
http://www.newsandstar.co.uk/news/viewarticle.aspx?id=361023
A FORMER Workington priest serving time for sex crimes against children has admitted sexually abusing an altar boy at the town's main Catholic church.
But Gregory Carroll, who was jailed in September for abusing 10 boys under the age of 15 while teaching in Yorkshire, will not be prosecuted for the offence.
The disgraced priest was thought to have kept his hands off children during his time in west Cumbria, but he was reinterviewed by police following a new complaint.
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| Disgraced: Gregory Carroll admitted abuse |
The Crown Prosecution Service has decided it is not in the public interest to prosecute Carroll further, as the 66-year-old is already serving four years for other sexual offences.
He will also remain on the sex offenders' register for the rest of his life.
But victim support groups have criticised the CPS for not allowing the 27-year-old victim, who was aged nine or 10 when he was attacked, his day in court. Carol Tindall, of West Cumbria Rape Crisis, said: "Each victim has a right to have their case heard. They deserve to know that they have been heard and people recognise what has happened to them.
"It is devastating to just be dismissed."
Carroll was jailed after he admitted abusing boys while working at Ampleforth College in North Yorkshire between 1973 and 1983.
When the abuse was discovered, he was quietly removed from teaching and sent to Workington to work as a priest at Our Lady and St Michael's church among the unsuspecting community.
Carroll has successfully appealed to get his sentence reduced by one year.
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