Interview in the Universe

I've just had it brought to my attention that Abbot Martin Shipperlee was interviewed in the Universe in November last year, the full text of the interview was placed in the December 2011 edition of the parish magazine.

What is your reaction to Lord Carlile’s Report?
Lord Carlile’s report does not make very pretty reading, in fact, what it contains is a source of shame for us. That is why we have accepted the recommendations in the report and are doing everything that we can to prevent anything like this happening again.

The bit about having accepted all the recommendations of the report is just not true. Father Gregory Chillman was listed in the report as one of the monks against whom there were credible allegations, and one of the recommendations of the report was that any such people should not be permitted to live at the Abbey. And yet he is still there.

Can you describe these measures?
First of all, we have taken a great deal of expert advice on safeguarding and we now have in place trained safeguarding teams for the school, the abbey and the parish.

That's good as far as it goes, it's a bit vague though.

The school has detailed safeguarding policies and procedures which meet with the approval of the Department for Education and the Independent Schools Inspectorate. The parish, of course, follows the Catholic Safeguarding Advisory Service policy and guidelines and the NSPCC are advising the Abbey on procedures. All key staff have had safeguarding training to the appropriate level.

The school's "detailed safeguarding policies and procedures" are still inadequate. Lord Carlile, though he has prosecuted and defended child abuse cases, is not an expert in how to organise effective safeguarding measures in an institutional setting. The Department of Education and the Independent Schools Inspectorate are only interested in ensuring that a school's policy meets statutory requirements, and given that the ISI and DfE managed not to notice anything wrong with the school until I explained it to them in words of one syllable, a reliance on their approval is not something that inspires confidence.

Lord Carlile advised that the governance of St Benedict’s School was, to be frank, no longer fit for purpose and that the school should become an educational charity, quite separate from the Abbey Trust.

Work has already started on this and everything should be in place by September 2012. The new governing body of the school cannot take over formally until the educational trust is established, but the transition will start shortly and an interim governing body, or governing body designate, will gradually assume responsibility for the school.

The governing body will have a lay chairman and monks will be in the minority. New governors will be recruited with the appropriate expertise and experience.

On this point I agree with Lord Carlile. But Lord Carlile is mistaken if merely changing the governance to a more secular model will of itself make much of a difference to safeguarding. There are plenty of secular independent schools which have had serious safeguarding problems. So this is welcome but largely irrelevant to the reason Lord Carlile was called in.

Over and above what Lord Carlile has recommended, I have commissioned an independent safeguarding expert to make unannounced inspections of the safeguarding arrangements in the school, parish and abbey.

He hasn't said who this expert is. We have been here before. Back in February 2010, long before Lord Carlile became involved, what purported to be the report of an "Independent Review" commissioned by the Abbot was published. I later learned who had conducted the inquiry, and a friend of mine spoke to him concerning the circumstances under which it had been carried out. It turned out that:

• the terms of reference were the Abbey only, not the school, 
• it was a paper-only review, nobody was interviewed.
• the reviewer visited for only half a day
• the review addressed only the period covering the abuse of Pearce's last victim, when Pearce was already under restrictions
• the reviewer was not told about the duration and number of Pearce's other known crimes, though he inferred that other crimes not disclosed had been committed.

Despite this, the report was placed on the school website as being the fulfilment of the Abbot's promise of an independent review.

It is on record that abuse occurred over many years, why was nothing done about it?
Hindsight makes everything clear, but in years gone past there was a general unwillingness to accept that such things could happen so that the children themselves found it difficult to find anyone to listen to them. The result was that often enough there was only gossip and rumour and little fact on which to act. That is why we have our present safeguarding structures in the Church, so that people are trained to notice, to listen and to act.

Many of those safeguarding structures were put in place by Archbishop Vincent Nichols, when he was Bishop of Birmingham and chairman of COPCA. However, when I raised concerns about Ealing Abbey with him, his response could be paraphrased as "nothing to do with me, guv". So much for the church's present safeguarding structures.

In his report, Lord Carlile states St Benedict’s rule of love and forgiveness appears to have overshadowed responsibility for children’s welfare. Is this the case?
This I think, refers to my decision to allow Fr David Pearce to continue living in the monastery after a civil claim for abuse had succeeded against him. I could have sent him away, but that would have meant that someone about whom I had justifiable concerns would have been living without any supervision. I judged that it was safer if he remained in the monastery where we could be sure that he had no contact with the school or parish and thus with young people. As it turned out, I made a grave error of judgement and can blame no‐one but myself. What I was attempting was much more difficult than I had expected and a young man was put in harm’s way as a result.

It could also be taken to refer to the habit of the Catholic hierarchy (clear from many other reports into abuse) when talking about "welfare" of considering solely the welfare of the abusing priest. The welfare of the abused child rarely if ever gets a look-in. There are Benedictine monasteries in England which do not have schools attached to them. Pearce could have been sent to one of them. Shipperlee could have cooperated with the local Social Services to work out the best approach to keeping children safe from Pearce.

But he did none of these things. He kept Pearce at the abbey, he did not tell people the truth about why he was on restricted ministry, instead he put it about that the restrictions were "to protect Fr David from unfounded allegations", and worst of all, he allowed a pupil of the school into the monastery itself as an employee to wash dishes at weekends.

Is the situation as bad as has been reported in the national press?In some ways, yes, in others no. As I have already said, I am making no excuse and I don’t seek to minimise what happened in the past. The press are quite right to report this. However, some reporting has given the impression that abuse has been taking place up to the present day. Editorial comments have sometimes appeared to be biased against the school, again dwelling upon what happened in the past with no recognition of the school as it is today. Certainly since I have been abbot and since Christopher Cleugh, the present headmaster has been in post, which is over a decade, there have been no suggestions of abuse in the school.

That is quite simply not true. We can admire the Abbot's sophistry of "no suggestions of abuse within the school", in that while Pearce's last victim was a pupil of the school and Pearce was a monk and priest and former teacher at and Trustee of the school, his last victim was abused outside the school. But even allowing for that, the Abbot's statement is not true. The Carlile report refers to a further incident that occurred within the school in the summer of 2010, after Pearce's arrest and conviction. Admittedly no criminal charges followed, but additional training in "communication skills" was given to the teacher in question.

Furthermore, Social Services have been notified of incidents concerning Father Gregory Chillman's conduct as chaplain of St Augustine's Priory School as recently as 2005 - in other words during Shipperlee's time as Abbot.

Why was Lord Carlile chosen to carry out the inquiry into events at St Benedict’s School?
As the situation unfolded, I quickly realised that I was out of my depth, that I needed guidance from professional people with experience in dealing with safeguarding matters in schools and within the Church. I had benefit of advice from a number of people from within the Church and others with no connection to the Church, including a senior social worker who has carried out high‐level investigations into the Church in Ireland. The consensus of advice was that a thorough independent investigation into past events was required, and Lord Carlile was recommended as someone eminently suitable to carry out that investigation. He has a track record of in depth investigations and has extensive experience in child abuse cases.

"Out of my depth" is about the most charitable possible interpretation of the situation. It is worth noting that Lord Carlile, by his own statements, did not carry out "a thorough independent investigation into past events". He did not report on individual incidents, he did not make recommendations concerning needed safeguarding improvements identified as a result of examining those incidents. He included in an appendix to his report a child protection policy for the school which he stated was as good as any in the country, but which did not ensure that all allegations of abuse without exception would be reported promptly to the LADO. If Shipperlee was wanting and expecting a thorough investigation, he didn't get it.

It has been widely reported in the press that (former Ealing monk) Fr Laurence Soper is on the run from the police. What exactly are the circumstances?That is the case. For the past 12 years, he was working as bursar at the Benedictine University in Rome. Back in March, he agreed to return to England for an appointment with the police.He had returned at the request of the police on two or three previous occasions, it was a matter of trust. In March, he abused that trust. He left the monastery in Rome, ostensibly to come to London and he hasn’t been seen since.

Laurence Soper is not just a former Ealing monk. He is Shipperlee's immediate predecessor as Abbot. We have a former Abbot of Ealing who is on the run rather than face child abuse charges.

Don’t you have any idea where he could be?
He could be anywhere, I have absolutely no idea. I have notified religious houses where he had stayed in the past about the situation, no one has any idea where he is. We have given every possible assistance to the police and we urge him to contact the police so that they can deal with allegations against him. He is an embarrassment to the Order of St Benedict and to the Church. He betrayed the trust placed in him by the police.

That photo was a bit slow appearing. It only appeared about 18 months after Soper went on the run.

Should you resign as Abbot?That is something I have thought about every day. As I have already said, I made one serious error of judgement but aside from that, all of the cases highlighted in the report happened in the past, many in the distant past, and all before my watch. The community has confidence in the measures I have taken and want me to see this through. Before I complete my term as Abbot I want to ensure that everything that needs to be done is in place for my successor.

By definition, all the cases in the report happened in the past, but there have been three known cases involving either Ealing monks or teachers at St Benedict's which have occurred during Shipperlee's time as Abbot. So "all before my watch" is not true. It is, to put it in the vernacular, a lie. What is more, it is a stupid lie because the dates of the incidents are recorded in the Carlile report available for anybody to take a look at.

What future do you see for the Benedictines in Ealing?
There have been times in recent months when I have wondered if Ealing Abbey has any future at all. But if I step back from the immediate train of events I can see a school that has flourished in the past decade and which is larger and more successful than ever despite the stain of its past. As for the monastery, we will prosper if we can show that we have learned from this terrible story, that we can confront the past and be better people and better monks for it.

If that is the basis for his confidence in the future of the Benedictines in Ealing, then the monastery is doomed. There is no sign that he has "learned from this terrible story". The school's child protection policy is still not of very good quality through it scrapes by National Minimum Standards. (You can compare it with the new St Augustine's Priory School policy, which is very much improved and is now clearly and obviously designed to ensure that the authorities are promptly informed of all concerns.) The parish website simply makes a blanket reference to NCSC procedures, which is not at all the same as actually having a safeguarding policy.

I also wouldn't mind an apology for this astonishing outburst from Mr Cleugh, in his September 2010 prizegiving day speech, given in the presence of the Abbot, parents, children and assorted dignitaries.

I absolutely refute that anyone associated with St Benedict’s School has misled the Inspectors or protected offenders - such allegations are at best misguided and at worst deliberately malicious. Recent media and blog coverage seem hell-bent on trying to discredit the School and, at the same time, destroy the excellent relationship between School and Monastery. Is this part of an anti-Catholic movement linked to the papal visit? I do not know, but it feels very much as if we are being targeted.

Cleugh has never publicly retracted those words.

Petition for Mandatory Reporting of child sex abuse in schools

Regular readers of this blog will by now be familiar with a fact which seems unbelievable to most members of the public. There is no statutory requirement for the management of a school or any other institution caring for children to inform the authorities of allegations or even known incidents of child sex abuse that come to their attention.

A head teacher can know that one of his staff has sexually assaulted or even raped one of his pupils on school premises, and he has no legal obligation to report anything to anybody.

I made this point on the Guardian website a while ago, at the height of the Jimmy Savile scandal, I got various disbelieving comments in response. For instance one said.

Utter rubbish, failing to report a serious offence such as rape to the police is in itself a very serious offence, where the hell did you get that from?

Another said essentially the same thing, but rather more politely

Isn't there already a law that says that not reporting knowledge of a crime is aiding and abetting that crime and therefore punishable?

I responded by quoting  from page 3 of the NSPCC factsheet An introduction to child protection legislation in the UK, which states the following.

Whilst local authorities have a mandatory duty to investigate if they are informed a child may be at risk, there are no specific mandatory child abuse reporting laws in the UK that require professionals to report their suspicions to the authorities.

This has to change. Just in the last year or two, there have been trials resulting in convictions for child sex crime of former teachers at St Benedict's School, Downside School, Wellington College, Chetham's School, King's School Rochester and Hillside First School. There are probably others which I've not been made aware of or can't name off the top of my head.

There is a very strong similarity between all the cases I've named. In all the cases, the teacher abused, the knowledge came to the attention of management but was not passed on to the authorities. The teacher went on to abuse again. The police became aware when informed by a route not involving the school. The abuser was subsequently convicted, often many years after the events had occurred.

I wonder how many cases have not yet come to the attention of the police? In order to get a feel for that I did a survey of the child protection policies of 60 randomly chosen secondary schools. The results were horrifying. 24 schools did not publish their policies online. Of the 36 schools which did publish their policies, only 16 made an undertaking to inform the LADO of all allegations of abuse, and only 8 promised to follow up an initial approach with a written confirmation.

If those proportions are in any way representative of school policies across the country, there could be a huge amount of abuse going unreported.

So, we need mandatory reporting. To that effect a petition has been started calling on the Department for Education to implement mandatory reporting in schools. If you care for the safety of your or other people's children, please sign the petition as soon as possible.

Mandatory reporting is needed because all too often voluntary reporting doesn't happen.

St Augustine's Priory School

Last month I wrote to the new headteacher at St Augustine's Priory School, Mrs Raffray. I asked if I could meet her to discuss safeguarding at the school. She replied promptly and invited me to visit the school to meet her.

The school does seem to have recovered considerably from the car crash of an inspection they suffered when the ISI visited in 2010. They had another inspection at the end of 2012, and the report was much better, and found that the school does now meet all its statutory obligations.

I don't normally put a great deal of weight on ISI reports. I have seen too many cases where the ISI have missed serious safeguarding shortcomings, but I had alreasdy warned the ISI I was looking carefully at them for their next inspection of St Augustine's, so I felt it likely that they would be looking carefully at both safeguarding and governance this time round, especially since these areas had been the subject of such adverse comment last time.

In addition, I have been impressed with the new safeguarding policy that has been put in place since she arrived. I have recently done a bit of research for a BBC radio programme, conducting a survey of the safeguarding policies of 60 randomly chosen secondary schools, checking them against 10 basic safeguarding criteria. It so happened that St Augustine's had been one of the schools in the random sample, and was one of just two schools in the sample which had scored a perfect 10 against the set of criteria I checked the policies against. In reading through the policy, I was impressed with the the fact that it was obviously not written with the intention of keeping "wriggle-room" available to allow for excuses not to report allegations of abuse.

So, I wanted to meet Mrs Raffray and see what I could learn about how she was going about implementing safeguarding at the school. It is one thing to have a well-written policy, but quite another to be implementing it effectively. We met last week and chatted for about an hour. I was impressed by what she told me. She regards having passed the ISI inspection as simply a milestone on the journey towards implementing top-quality safeguarding.

We talked through various aspects of safeguarding. For instance, we discussed the issue of instrumental music lessons, in the light of the recent scandal at Chetham's School. Peripatetic music teachers usually teach at several schools, so they have different safeguarding arrangements to work with in the different schools they teach at. In addition, instrumental music lessons are one-on-one and music is an emotional subject and so the scope for and risks of abuse are greater.

I asked what was being done to address this point. I was told that the peripatetic teachers have been required to have and use a school email address for all electronic communications with St Augustine's pupils, that they have been required to ensure that they meet the St Augustine's safeguarding policy and teachers' code of conduct when they are teaching at the school, whatever requirements they meet elsewhere. In addition, the rooms they use for teaching have windows in the doors and that people do look through the windows from time to time just to check that all is well.

This seems to me to be a sensible set of arrangements. The primary aim is of course to protect the children, but it also helps ensure that the staff are not put into unsafe situations.

One of the areas of criticism in the ISI report concerned the current arrangements for governance. I wanted to know whether the governance issues - the separate boards of trustees and governors had in any way slowed down Mrs Raffray in implementing effective safeguarding. I was assured that they had not. She told me that everybody had recognised that following the bad ISI report and the article about the school in The Times, things had to change. Until the governance reform is carried through, there remains in principle the scope for deadlock between the trustees and governors, but she has had nothing of that sort in dealing with safeguarding. As I understand it, there has been no deadlock on any subject since she arrived at the school.

I asked Mrs Raffray what was going to be her next step in improving safeguarding. She said that the current policy meets regulatory requirements but she regards it is being less than ideal in terms of ease of use. She wants to make it easier to use so that safeguarding becomes automatically part of all the decision-making of the school.

We talked about the overall philosophy of safeguarding, how to ensure that attitudes are such that children are effectively protected. She talked of the need for well-written procedires, but also for treating the dignity of the child as paramount, that you can usually get to the truth of any situation by listening to the children.

I was very heartened by the discussion. Mrs Raffray struck me as being extremely dedicated to ensuring the safety of the pupils in her care. She seems determined to drive up standards in all aspects of the operations of the school, not just safeguarding.

This of course was a discussion, not an inspection. I'm not qualified to carry out an inspection, and to carry out an inspection would have required access to confidential records that it would have been entirely improper for Mrs Raffray to show me. I didn't ask for that access and she did not volunteer it.

But as far as I can ascertain, St Augustine's is now a safe school where safeguarding and child protection is given the priority it deserves. I am extremely happy both with the changes that have occurred so far and with Mrs Raffray's determination to improve things further.

I hope that parents and governors continue to take an active interest in safeguarding at the school. Lots of people keeping an eye on things is the best defence against any drop in standards in the future. You never finally win the war against abuse. It requires perpetual vigilance.

On the same day that I wrote to Mrs Raffray, I also wrote to Mr Patrick Murphy O'Connor, the new chair of governors at St Benedict's school. I have not yet received any reply from him.

£185,000

That is what The BBC is paying Lord McAlpine in compensation for its libel of him, promptly corrected. And there may be more coming to him as his lawyers search the internet for more people to sue.

How much compensation have Jimmy Savile's victims received from the BBC so far? Zero.

How much will they receive? An awful lot less than McAlpine did.

Payouts of as much as £50,000 in child sex abuse cases are rare, and require proof of loss of earnings capability directly attributable to the abuse, or some diagnosed mental or physical condition that can be proved to have been solely caused by the abuse.

Most child sex abuse cases get settled for £5,000 to £15,000, with more towards the lower end of that scale.

So a retired politician's hurt feelings are valued by this society as being about twenty times as valuable as a life wrecked by childhood sex abuse.

Am I angry about this? You bet I am!

Newsnight, the BBC and Savile

In almost all of the coverage of Newsnight, the BBC and the Savile scandal, people have been missing the main point. They are treating this as a news story, handled badly or well by Newsnight according to opinion. But it isn't.

From the moment Karin Ward mentioned Gary Glitter it was an allegation of a serious time committed on BBC premises by a living person. At that moment, the news story should have taken second priority behind passing the issue up the management chain so the authorities could be informed. Even had Glitter not been mentioned, the word should still have gone straight to the top of management because if Savile has been able to hoodwink the BBC for so long about this, there was still the possibility that the BBC's procedures even today are still inadequate.

But Newsnight didn't do that. They held onto the story so they could make a big public splash. That might be good journalism, but it stinks as a child protection measure. Had the abuse happened elsewhere, e.g. a school, we would expect the head teacher to be informed and the authorities immediately after, even though from experience I know that doesn't actually happen at some schools.

Panorama didn't notice the child protection aspect. They just treated it as a news story badly managed by Newsnight.

After making an apology to the victims, George Entwistle has also concentrated solely on the journalistic aspects of the issue. It doesn't seem to have occurred to him that Newsnight ought to have informed his predecessor for child protection reasons.

And the MPs on the Select Committee who grilled Entwistle have also comprehensively missed the point. They grilled him on how Newsnight covered the story.

When is everyone covering this going to stop thinking as journalists and start looking at the child protection issues? If the abuse has remained hidden and unaddressed until now, there is nothing to prevent there from being another Savile still at the BBC.

Mandatory reporting of child sex abuse

The following Letter to the Editor was published in The Times on Friday 19th October.


The Government should act without delay to pass a law on mandatory reporting of known or suspected child abuse

Sir, Child sex abuse cases have some very important similarities. Many cases involve abuse that occurred in an institutional context, usually in a school. In these cases the abuser was able to work himself into a position of trust, and the management of the institution had knowledge or suspicions of abuses and did not pass those concerns on to the authorities. In every case, the abuser was able to commit further serious crimes after those concerns had first come to light. Had the concerns been promptly reported to the authorities, it is at least likely that the abuses could have been stopped at a much earlier stage, and much avoidable suffering prevented.

Unbelievably, Britain has no law requiring schools or other institutions responsible for the care of children to report allegations or incidents of child sex abuse. A head teacher can know that one of his or her staff has sexually assaulted one of the pupils and he or she has no legal obligation to report anything to anybody. This has happened in some cases.

A law on mandatory reporting of child abuse was passed last year in the Republic of Ireland, with a sentence of up to five years’ imprisonment for failing to report abuse. A similar law is urgently needed in Britain to ensure that people can report without fear of losing their jobs, and that their employers are prompt in passing those concerns to the authorities.

The Government should act without delay to pass a law on mandatory reporting of known or suspected child abuse in all environments where adults act in loco parentis.

Jonathan West, Lucy Duckworth, www.seechanges.org; Ken Acons, Rosminian Boys Group; Piers Brogan, Chairman of Rosminian Boys Group; Bob Brecher, Professor, University of Brighton; Helen Charlton, Minster and Clergy Sexual Abuse Survivors; Tracey Emmott, director, Emmott Snell Solicitors; Michael Ghersie, chartered accountant; Valerie Gibbs, vicar; David Greenwood, chairman of www.stopchurchchildabuse.co.uk; Phil Johnson, Eastbourne Survivors Group; Rory Johnston, Rosminian Boys Group; Anne Lawrence, barrister, Atlas Chambers; Francis Lionnet, communications consultant; Donald MacFaul, Dere Street Barristers; Olenka Frenkiel, investigative journalist; Clint McMillian, Rosminian Boys Group; John Poppleton, product manager; Peter Saunders, CEO, Napac; Richard Scorer, partner, Pannone LLP Solicitors; Michael Sheridan, accountant; Sam Simeonides, Rosminian Boys Group; Matthew Starrett-Bigg, Rosminian Boys Group; Anna Whiting, campaigner; Clare Whiting, art director; Julian Whiting, ex-police officer, campaigner; Mrs Lorena Whiting, campaigner; The Rev Peter Whiting, Baptist minister; Sophie Whiting, teacher; Alex Wilson, Rosminian Boys Group; Rory O’Neill, Rosminian Boys Group

Anonymity for teachers

On October 1st, a new law came into effect protecting the anonymity of teacher accused of child abuse. According to an Info Update from the DfE

It is an offence to report information that could lead to the identification (e.g. name or school) of a teacher who is subject to an allegation of a criminal offence made by, or on behalf of, a registered pupil at the school. Any publication of such an allegation that identifies the teacher involved before they are charged with a criminal offence will be in breach of the restrictions. Such restrictions would remain unless or until the teacher is charged with a criminal offence, a warrant for arrest is issued, or until the Secretary of State or GTC for Wales publishes info about an investigation or decision in a disciplinary case arising from the allegation.

Had Jimmy Savile been alive and a teacher, it would have been an offence for the recent reports about him to be published.

The DfE website contains a nauseating statement on the subject

In The Coalition: our programme for government, the Government made a commitment to give anonymity to teachers accused by pupils and to take other measures to protect against false allegations. A survey commissioned by the Department found that of the 2827 allegations of abuse made against school teachers in 2009/10, almost one-fifth (19 per cent) were considered to be unfounded (no evidence or proper basis which supports the allegation being made). False allegations can blight careers and ruin lives.

I'm particularly outraged by the slide from "unfounded" to "False" in successive sentences, which gives the impression that all unfounded allegations are false.

Parents, please realise that you are on your own. If your child is being abused at school, the school has no statutory obligation to report anything it knows. The only have to "have regard for" statutory guidance which says that they should report it. They can regard the guidance all they like and then they can perfectly legally decide that they will handle all such allegations in-house without making any report to the authorities.

And if they don't report it to the authorities, of course no charges will ever be made, and so you are permanently barred from publishing anything about it. All you can do (if you child tells you about it, which they might not) is go to the police yourself.