Ealing Abbey: Action now, rather than regret later

I held off blogging about Ealing Abbey because it's a hard subject for me to put into words. Now a report commissioned by St Benedict's school has concluded that the monks should no longer be involved in the running of the school after numerous cases of abuse over the last 20 years. The move will come into force next September. A mixed blessing some may say.

Lord Carlile's report on St Benedict's school applauds its academic status and its schooling, but lists the cases of abuse of power revealing the harsh reality.

It is a saddening read. The full report is here.

Thanks to the actions of a few (a few too many) the position of the Abbey in the school's running is untenable. It is instances like these that further remove the church from education and schooling. 

Of course, this is right in the circumstances.

David Pearce was jailed in 2009 after he admitted to abusing pupils, he had been headmaster at the school from 1993 and stayed at the Abbey after he left the post. Then in March Fr Laurence Soper went on the run after allegations of abuse.

The final nail in the abbey's coffin has been the Vatican's move to investigate the school - the first case in the UK - has made history, but this is perhaps one 'first' we'd rather do without.

Comments on all the news stories I've read speculate on how people could have known they were dangerous and potential risks, but really until someone speaks out how can we ever know?

Teaching is always a profession that has the risk of abuse by its nature, but we don't tar all teachers with the same brush. The same applies here to priests.

We can't embark on a witch hunt. There are good priests as there are bad. Those that are good should not suffer because of the bad apples. Instead we should support the Abbey and hope it can learn from the mistakes of the past and move on.  

In the case of Ealing Abbey and St Benedict's, the trust has been broken. The position of the school is one that no one would like to be in right now, but it is still one that can be regarded with sadness despite all that has gone before.

We can only hope that Lord Carlile's report is a sign of things to come. Transparency, openness and an awareness that leads to the church stamping out such problems as these so we do not find ourselves wondering what we could have done and what went wrong again.

Action now is always better than regret later. 

Posted in: abuse,blog,catholic church,Ealing Abbey