Benedictines abuse hearing announced

The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) has announced that the preliminary hearing into the English Benedictine congregation of the Catholic Church will be held on 6 June. The public inquiry – one of only four to be held this year – will take place in December.

The Benedictine case study will examine evidence of non-recent child abuse allegations, including at Ampleforth College, North Yorkshire, and St Benedict’s school in Ealing, west London. It will encompass Dr Elizabeth Mann’s 2003 review of Ampleforth, the Independent Schools Inspectorate’s 2010 inspection of St Benedict’s and Lord Carlile’s 2011 inquiry into St Benedict’s.

The inquiry into the Catholic Church in England and Wales, which includes a second case study of the Archdiocese of Birmingham, is one of 13 investigations, which also involve the Anglican Church, Lambeth Council in London and Children Outside the UK. It will examine the nature and extent of abuse within the Catholic Church and institutional responses, including the adequacy of safeguarding measures.

The national investigation is expected to take five years, after which it will publish a report and recommendations. The inquiry does not have the power to determine criminal liability of organisations or individuals but must “refer any allegation of child abuse it receives to the police”, an IICSA spokesperson said.

The IICSA was set up by then Home Secretary Theresa May in 2014, to examine whether public bodies including local authorities, the police, religious organisations, the armed forces and public and private institutions, plus people in the public eye, failed in their duty to protect children from sexual abuse, by examining historic allegations going back decades. Mrs May said her aim was to “expose those failures and learn the lessons” from the past.

Its chairwoman is Professor Alexis Jay, a former director of social services who headed the inquiry into child exploitation in Rotherham. She is the fourth chairperson since the IICSA launched three years ago.