SPOTLIGHT OF SHAME FALLS UPON ENGLISH BENEDICTINE CONGREGATION

At the start of August, Professor Alexis Jay confirmed that the public inquiry she is chairing into child sexual abuse in England and Wales would focus its hearings during October and November on scandals at Benedictine schools and monasteries. 

The Benedictines have been mired in controversy for 20 years following a series of revelations about sex abuse scandals at their prestigious private schools: Ampleforth, Downside, Worth and St Benedict’s, Ealing, west London. 

Both the independent inquiry into child sex abuse, led by Professor Jay, and a separate Crown Court trial of a Benedictine Abbot on child sex abuse charges taking place this autumn, the order and its educational establishments will be under severe scrutiny.

The Benedictine Order, routed from England by Henry VIII in 1536, returned in the 19th century.  The English Benedictine Congregation was founded and the monks engaged in parish work and the establishment of schools. 

The English Benedictines have a long history of educating the children of England’s most influential and wealthiest Catholic families.

The Order is now about to join the ranks of so many religious communities which have fallen into disrepute for alleged sexual abuse of children. 

Investigations by prosecutors representing the Crown have uncovered abuse at Benedictine schools dating to the 1960s. Three Ampleforth monks and a lay teacher have been convicted of assault. At Downside, four monks and two others have been put on restricted ministry.

A former Headmaster of the junior school at Ealing was convicted of abuse and the school’s deputy head of possessing child abuse images.  The former Abbot, who also taught at the school, is awaiting trial. In the meantime, the institutions themselves have carried out their own investigations and changed their governance to improve child protection and safeguarding.

The reputation of the Benedictines has been sullied and tarnished, perhaps forever.

And yet, there are victims of this scandal among the monks as well.  There is also need to consider the plight of those who have been accused of sex abuse and then cleared. At Ampleforth, the current Abbot was investigated by police and exonerated but has still not returned to his monastery nearly a year later as he awaits approvals from Church safeguarding officials.

In the past four decades, the Order’s numbers have fallen sharply. In 1973, there were 530 monks and 136 nuns but this has dropped to 280 monks and 35 nuns today. There are fewer than a dozen novices.

Abuse crises have beset the Catholic church around the world and the sad stories and scandals never seem to end.  Now, it's England.

As Summer moves toward Autumn, the spotlight of shame will fall upon the English Benedictine Congregation.  Holy your hat, the stories are likely to be both shocking and painful to hear yet again.