At the same time, he dedicated his life outside school to continuing to help young people, working with foster care organisations and as a regional manager for the Camp Quality charity - aimed at providing children with cancer a happy, fun filled life.

He's now a convicted sex offender.

The 56-year-old was sentenced to two years, seven months' imprisonment at the Christchurch District Court in June for sexually abusing three of his pupils. Read more

Two Court of Appeal judgments tendered in a case brought by six former Gloriavale women describe how Christian was said to have used his dominance to sexually exploit young followers and had no capacity to accept responsibility for his offending and reform.

Christian - formerly known as Neville Cooper - was sentenced to five years in prison in December 1995, on three charges of indecent assault for inserting a wooden dildo inside a 19-year-old woman over three successive days. Read more

The claims, which lawyers said far eclipsed the number of abuse accusations filed in Catholic Church cases, continued to mount.

The figure revealed the scale of alleged abuse committed over decades by scout leaders. It dwarfs the roughly 11,000 complaints filed in recent years against the Catholic Church.

Claimants had until Nov 16 to register for compensation from the organization, Paul Mones, a lawyer for the victims, told AFP.

Rocked by accusations of sexual abuse, the BSA filed for bankruptcy in February to block settlement claims from hitting the organization directly. Instead, they funnelled them to a compensation fund.

"It's by far the largest sexual abuse scandal in the US," Mones said. He added that scouting has long offered a "perfect petri dish" for paedophiles, "boys have taken an oath of loyalty, they are away from their parents, in the wilderness."

"We are devastated by the number of lives impacted by past abuse in scouting and moved by the bravery of those who have come forward," BSA said in a statement.

"We intentionally developed an open, accessible process to reach survivors and help them take an essential step toward receiving compensation. The response we have seen from survivors has been gut-wrenching. We are deeply sorry," the BSA added.

The group, founded in 1910, has 2.2 million members between the ages of five and 21.

Revelations of US Boy Scouts sex-abuse came to widespread attention in 2012 when the Los Angeles Times published internal documents spelling out details of decades of sexual abuse.

Most incidents were never reported to authorities, and the BSA took it upon themselves to remove the accused offenders.

Negotiations will now begin between victims, the BSA and their insurers to determine the amounts to be paid.

In 2010, Mones won $20 million for a former Boy Scout abused by his leader.

Sources

• Barron's
• NY Times

Janiak's resignation follows accusations made in a documentary about his handling of two abuse cases.

The documentary "Playing Hide and Seek" was posted online in May this year. The film exposed two cases of pedophile priests that Janiak failed to take action against.

The film featured court testimony about Janiak's role in helping transfer one priest from Wroclaw to another diocese; something which happened even after a criminal investigation had begun.

The priest was subsequently convicted and defrocked.

The film also documented an alleged sex abuse cover-up relating to another priest during Janiak's time as Kalisz bishop, a position he held since 2012.

In June this year, Pope Francis ordered Janiak to leave Kalisz. He forbade the bishop from having any influence on how the diocese is run pending the investigation.

The film was the second focused on Polish clergy abuse to be made by brothers Tomasz and Marek Sekielski.

Their first film last year, "Tell No One," addressed clerical abuse in Poland. The film has been viewed almost 24 million times on YouTube.

The Polish bishops conference reported the news on its website on Saturday. It posted a statement from the Vatican ambassador to Poland simply saying that Janiak had resigned.

The statement noted the archbishop of Lodz, Grzegorz Rys would be the "apostolic administrator" of Kalisz until the position is permanently filled.

A spokesman for the Polish Bishops' Conference said: "It is understandable that such information arouses numerous social reactions and evokes emotions among the faithful. Currently, we are waiting for a reliable explanation of the media reports on this event, which — once again — should never take place, especially among the people of the Church."

Sources

• ABC News
• Catholic News Agency

In its report on the Children and Community Services Amendment Bill 2019, the Council's legislation committee says:

"Ministers of religion be excused from criminal responsibility [of mandatory reporting] only when the grounds of their belief is based solely on information disclosed during religious confession."

The amendment bill currently says priests must break the confessional seal to report known or suspected child sex abuse.

The committee says whether preserving the confessional seal is appropriate needs further consultation.

It suggests the Council "consult with ministers of religion on non-statutory provisions that would facilitate the effective use of information received during religious confession."

The bill aims to implement some of the recommendations the Royal Commission into Child Sex Abuse made in 2017.

Of the over 600 public submissions about the bill, 90 percent were opposed to breaking the confessional seal. Many were from Catholic and Orthodox Churches.

Numerous priests noted the law would be unenforceable, as confessions are usually anonymous.

Archbishop Timothy of Costelloe and Fr. Abram Abdelmalek, an Oriental Orthodox priest, told the committee "they support the introduction of mandatory reporting for ministers of religion, with the exception of the confession."

"The proposed law would render priests who remain faithful to the obligations that they assumed at the time of their ordination… liable to prosecution and conviction as criminals for being faithful to their commitments.

"To make the free practice of an essential part of the Catholic faith illegal seems to me to be something that modern secular societies have always understood to be beyond the limits of their authority."

If a priest heard a confession of child sex abuse they would be responsible to do their best to convince the perpetrator to stop it, Costelloe says.

This may involve persuading the perpetrator to give themselves in to the authorities - and accompanying them to help them do so.

"It is very clear that the priest has a fundamental responsibility to do everything he can without breaking the seal of the confession..."

Asked if Catholic priests would comply with a law requiring the violation of the sacramental seal, Costelloe told the committee:

"Every priest knows what his obligations are, and he knows what the penalties are of not being faithful to those obligations, and he also knows the basis of those obligations, and the basis of the obligations are divine law."

He won't be asking priests to break divine law.

The "well-intentioned" law could make matters worse for victims, Costelloe said.

This is because there is "no chance" a perpetrator could be convinced to do something about it. Nor will victims disclose abuse in the confessional as it wouldn't be confidential.

Several Australian states and territories have adopted laws forcing priests to violate the confessional seal. New South Wales has upheld the seal.

The Vatican has reiterated the seal is inviolable and absolution cannot be conditioned on future actions in the external forum.

Source

• Catholic News Agency
• Image: Virtue Online

Prosecutors in the state of Victoria say 19 journalists and 21 publications aided and abetted contempt of court by overseas media and breached the trial judge's suppression orders.

Pell had been found guilty of sexually assaulting two choirboys. Reporting on the case was suppressed to avoid prejudicing another trial on separate charges.

After the verdict, however, some Australian publishers said an unnamed high-profile person had been convicted of a serious crime that could not be reported. Some overseas media named Pell and the charges.

The second case was later dropped and the suppression order was lifted in February 2019. Pell's conviction was overturned by Australia's High Court in April.

Supreme Court of Victoria Justice John Dixon has proposed beginning the trial against the media to begin on 9 November.

The prosecution and defence have yet to agree on all the issues at stake. They also need to decide and whether to go through a single trial or several.

The prosecution is seeking one trial, which would be held before a judge. The media lawyer says there appears to be 13 separate controversies to resolve.

"The respondents are very anxious for these matters to be resolved, finally, that have been hanging over their heads for far too long, but we do think it's a question of proceeding with some caution," Matthew Collins told the court.

Those facing contempt charges include journalists from Nine Entertainment Co's newspapers The Age and the Australian Financial Review and several News Corp publications.

Breaches of suppression orders can be punished with jail for up to five years and fines of nearly A$100,000 for individuals and nearly A$500,000 for companies.

The next hearing in the case is set for July.

Source

• Reuters
• Image: Hawaii Public Radio

However, responding to Otago Daily Times questions, an inquiry spokeswoman confirmed the ability to refer alleged abuses to police would be limited to offenders who were still alive. Read more

The director of public prosecutions, Kerri Judd QC, has challenged Pell's grounds to appeal to the High Court.

Background
December 2018: Pell found guilty in the County Court of Victoria on five charges related to sexual assault of two boys in the 1990s.

March 2019: Pell sentenced to six years in prison; appeals to the Victorian Court of Appeal.

August: Appeal court dismisses appeal by a majority of two to one.

September: Pell's lawyers sought leave to appeal to the High Court of Australia.

Special leave to appeal application

Judd's summary to the High Court says there was no error in the Appeal court's majority decision to uphold Pell's conviction.

She says the Cardinal's legal team failed to raise any important question of law in the application for special leave to appeal.

Furthermore, Appeal court Justice Mark Weinberg's dissenting view isn't grounds for appeal.

"The mere fact that Weinberg JA has taken a different view of the evidence to the majority does not justify intervention by the High Court.

"The [special leave to appeal] identifies no error in the majority approach and no question of law for this court to resolve;

"it does no more than ask this court to substitute for the view taken by the majority and the jury a different view of the evidence."

Pell's lawyers say a mistake occurred because Pell, rather than the prosecutors, was required to prove the offending was impossible.

They also argue the judges erred in not finding the jury's verdicts unreasonable. They say there was reasonable doubt about whether opportunity existed for the crimes to have occurred.

They also say changes in law over the decades since the crimes occurred make it more difficult to test sex assault allegations.

Other concerns Pell's legal team has include inconsistencies in the complainant's version of events.

The High Court will consider Pell's special leave application documents in conjunction with Judd's submission. The Court will then say if it will permit or deny the motion.

If leave is granted, Pell will need to lodge a formal appeal. The process can take up to six months and is sometimes completed behind closed doors.

Source

• The Age
• The Guardian
• The Australian
• Image: The Australian

Although special leave cases are not usually granted by the High Court, it's possible Pell's could be accepted.

This is because judges at his appeal could not agree about Pell's guilt or innocence.

Only two of the three Victorian Appeal Court judges deemed him guilty of the sex abuse accusations of which he had been convicted.

He was found guilty by a jury last year of sex offences against two teenage choirboys after Mass at in 1996 while he was archbishop.

One of the former choirboys gave evidence at Pell's trials.

The other died in 2014 from a drug overdose. His family says his death was linked to post-traumatic stress disorder from the abuse.

Chief judge Anne Ferguson and the president of the court Chris Maxwell found the former choirboy to be a truthful witness. They said Pell's conviction should stand.

Judge Mark Weinberg does not share their opinion.

He found the complainant embellished his account at times. In his opinion, Pell should be acquitted.

Pell's barristers say the Court mistakenly reversed the onus of proof when hearing his case.

This forced Pell to prove it was impossible for him to sexually assault the two choirboys in a cathedral.

His legal team also says there is reasonable doubt about the existence of an opportunity for the attack to have occurred.

Pell is now exercising his last legal avenue to overturn his conviction.

Unless he is granted the right to appeal and has his conviction overturned, Pell will continue to serve his six-year prison sentence.

He must serve at least three years and eight months before being eligible to apply for parole.

The Vatican is waiting for the outcome of this final appeal process before ruling on Pell's status in the Church.

In the meantime, he remains an archbishop and a member of the College of Cardinals.

Pell has not been permitted to celebrate Mass in prison.

Source

• Catholic News Agency
• The Australian
• Image: RNZ

The castration process - which is confined to offenders aged between 18 and 65 - will involve "coercive chemical castration" by injecting anti-androgen drugs to reduce libido and sexual activity.

The new law will apply to all those who commit the "unnatural" rape and sexual abuse of children above and below the age of puberty.

In addition, the maximum jail term for raping a child was increased from 12 to 15 years, and a public register of paedophiles jailed for child rape and sexual abuse of minors has been established.

They will be monitored for life by police after release from jail.

In 2017 official figures showed there were 320 child rapes in Ukraine.

In addition, there are believed to be thousands of other cases of paedophile sex abuse.

Ukraine's national police chief says five children were raped in four regions of Ukraine within just 24 hours.

"And these are the crimes which parents reported to police despite their fear and anxiety to do so.

"We can only guess how many latent sexual crimes against children we have in the country."

Radical Party leader Oleg Lyashko who proposed the new castration law says Ukrainian law is necessary because Ukraine "does not have a life term or death penalty for sex crimes against children".

Furthermore, he says it's highly likely that the rapist would be back to his "business" again after being released from jail.

This was why castration was needed, he says.

Another former Soviet state, Kazakhstan, also permits the chemical castration of sex offenders.

Source

• Daily Mail
• Mirror
• Image: NBS System

The charity has also been criticised for ignoring victims' complaints.

In a 150-page report, the Charity Commission (a UK watchdog organisation that reports directly to the UK parliament) laid out the outcome of its investigations into Oxfam, exposing what it described as a "culture of poor behaviour".

The Commission says it heard complaints of Oxfam staff sexually abusing over a dozen under age volunteers in high street charity shops.

It also learned that convicted sex offenders were found working behind some charity shop counters.

The Commission found much to criticise in the way Oxfam - purportedly a "global charity fighting poverty and injustice" - dealt with claims of serious sexual misconduct by its staff in Haiti following the 2010 earthquake.

It found Oxfam failed to act on reports that senior workers were raping Haitian convent girls as young as 12.

The report also says messages from victims sent directly to Dame Barbara Stocking, Oxfam's former head, were dismissed as fake.

The emails, sent in 2011, claimed to be from a 13-year-old Haitian. She said she and a friend had been forced into prostitution to survive and had been "beaten and used by two men who I know work for you.

"They also have boss who works for you and I have not met, but my young friend, she is 12 (and) has had sex with him."

The emails arrived as Oxfam was investigating allegations that senior aid workers were paying Haitian girls for sex.

Dame Barbara replied to the sender immediately, promising the allegations would be taken seriously.

However, a member of staff later admitted that after a brief investigation the charity "thought no more of it, to be honest".

Last year Oxfam was accused of covering up claims staff sexually exploited victims of the 2010 earthquake.

Oxfam accepted the findings, saying what happened in Haiti was "shameful".

Source

• BBC
• Telegraph
• Image:www.itv.com

Some clerical sex abuse survivors were reported as saying "even a week would have been enough". Others said the ruling is too lenient.

Some described the prosecution as proof the church is no longer above the law. Others said they suspected Pell has been made a scapegoat for the church's sins.

Pell himself maintains he is innocent of abusing two 13-year-old choir boys in Melbourne's St Patrick's Cathedral following Mass in December 1996 and early 1997.

He has lodged an appeal.

Of the two choirboys who fell victim to Pell, one has since died. His father is following the case through on his behalf.

The surviving victim says he is finding it hard to "take comfort" in Pell's jail sentence because his request to appeal the conviction has been granted. The appeal has been set for 5 June.

He said in a statement read by his lawyer: "I respect what the judge said. It was meticulous, and it was considered [but] it is hard for me, for the time being, to take comfort in this outcome.

"I appreciate that the court has acknowledged what was inflicted upon me as a child. However, there is no rest for me. Everything is overshadowed by the forthcoming appeal."

The father of the deceased victim, who is suing Pell, described Pell's sentence as a "joke" which could see him freed on parole after three years and eight months.

His lawyer said victims of abuse have been "waiting to feel heard.

"Pell's sentencing moves that progress forward, even if only a few small steps. I admire the courage of my client to keep fighting on behalf of his deceased son. To him, this battle is not over.

"The criminal justice system has only partially satisfied our client's pursuit for justice today.

"It's now on us as his civil litigators to keep pushing for more just outcomes."

The lawyer said her client is suing the cardinal "knowing that civil action has the power to disrupt an institution and impact meaningful change to prevent more tragedies from occurring".

Pell's sentence is said in part to reflect the court standards of two decades ago when his crimes were committed. In those days, judges placed less weight on the damage done to children by sexual abuse than is the case today.

Chief Judge Peter Kidd who imposed the sentence says it is shorter than usual due to Pell's age, 77, and ill health.

"Your age ... is relevant in a number of ways.

"Of some real importance ... is the fact that each year you spend in custody will represent a substantial portion of your remaining life expectancy.

"While it is a matter of speculation as to how long you will live, the fact is that you are of advanced years and are entering the last phase of your life."

Source

• The Tablet
• La Croix
• NewsTalkZB
• Image: NewstalkZB

Police are treating the death of John Capparelli, who was 70, as a homicide. According to the coroner's office the former priest had been shot in the neck.

Although police say a suspect has not yet been identified, they are "following up on developed leads".

Last month Capparelli's name was listed among 188 priests the Archdiocese of Newark said had been "credibly accused" of sexual crimes against children. Over 100 of those named are dead.

According to the archdiocese's list, Capparelli had multiple victims and had been "permanently removed from ministry/laicised".

Accusations against him date from the 1970s through to the early 1990s. He was removed from parish ministry in 1989, suspended from ministry in 1992, and was dismissed from the clerical state around 2013.

After being removed from Catholic ministry, he worked as a maths teacher at a Newark public high school.

New Jersey's Star-Ledger newspaper, which has reported extensively on the abuse allegations against Capparelli, says "as a sideline" he operated from his home a fetish website that featured men wrestling.

He had his teaching certificate removed in 2011 after the abuse allegations were revealed by the newspaper. He moved to Nevada in 2016.

"The world is a safer place without him," one of his accusers said after hearing the news of his death.

"The guy had a 40-year record of abuse. Whatever led to his death, it's a certain amount of karma."

Source

• Huff Post
• Catholic News Agency
• Image: NJ.com

Historians are beginning to point out that secular practice to address the abuse of children is still evolving, and sometimes protects the organisation, not the vulnerable.

Recent research has also found that child protection systems across many countries are greatly overburdened.

We cannot report or prosecute our way out of this crisis. As a result some agencies are adopting what they call "a public health approach".

Dealing with abuse after it has happened is a "downstream" approach: public health approaches aim at prevention, upstream.

Public health approaches are now common in mental health (don't just strengthen the individual, address the factors in school, work and social life that predispose us to mental ill-health) and violent crime (the famous Glasgow model, which seeks to establish the causes of violence and to identify and pioneer new approaches to preventing it, often by promoting co-operation between the police, education system and health service).

It is now time to consider public health approaches to child abuse.

I've been advising government on public health approaches to mental health and serious violence, and I've been doing the same on safeguarding, working with Catholic organisations to trial this process.

A public health approach to abuse would seek to understand how the risk and impact of abuse is worsened, prevented or disrupted by multiple factors.

Strengthening individuals is not enough.

Creating a culture where we systematically make abuse less likely to happen, and make it the default culture to report and respond effectively when it does are key components.

What would it look like if the Church adopted this approach?

There would be strong advantages.

First, honesty about how complex the challenge is: simplistic analyses break down.

Greater personal piety is not the "solution"; gay clergy is not the "root problem".

Seeing abuse as a system, with factors ranging from environmental (like organisational culture, including the formation of priests) through to situational (the circumstances making abuse possible or likely) and to individual behaviour, becomes the task.

It's here that we get to the steps of a public health approach. I'll outline seven. Continue reading

• Jim McManus is vice president of the UK Association of Directors of Public Health.
• Image: The Tablet

More than 60,000 children are reported to have been abused every year, outnumbering those killed by guns or cars.

Those who survive are often left not only with physical wounds, but also with psychological wounds that may never heal.

These wounds exact both a profound personal and social cost.

Much attention has been focused on the issue of child sexual abuse and the Catholic Church, and rightly so.

Allegations of abuse by clergy and church workers as well as cover-ups and bureaucratic mishandling by bishops, dioceses and religious orders have caused terrible pain for survivors of such abuse and their families.

It also has resulted in disillusionment on the part of ordinary Catholics.

The cost of this abuse and its aftermath totals more than $4 billion so far, according to the U.S. bishops' Secretariat for Child and Youth Protection.

While the Catholic Church continues to struggle with this legacy, it has instituted a wide variety of steps to improve oversight, identify abusers and protect children.

One under-reported fact from the recent, highly publicized Pennsylvania grand jury report is that for all of the many horrors it identified, the good news was that it appeared to document the decline in current cases.

As Jesuit Fr. Tom Reese told America magazine in its Dec. 24 issue, every one of the accused priests in the report was either deceased or had been removed from ministry, "and only two had been accused of abusing a child in the last 20 years."

During these same 20 years, however, an estimated 1.2 million children in this country were abused nationwide in schools, organizations, churches and families.

Understanding the plague of sexual abuse in this country means going beyond the immediate headlines and understanding what experts are saying about this scourge.

It also means looking not only at the Catholic Church but at all institutions and societal structures where abuse can take place.

So far, no grand jury, congressional committee or law enforcement organization has undertaken a broad societal investigation of what is happening to children in public or private schools, in sports and other youth-oriented programs and organizations, in pediatric facilities and perhaps most common, in families. (In Australia, a Royal Commission investigation of child abuse in nongovernmental organizations took five years.)

"Sexual victimization of children is a serious and pervasive issue in society. It is present in families, and it is not uncommon in institutions where adults form mentoring and nurturing relationships with adolescents, including schools and religious, sports and social organizations," said the John Jay report issued in May 2011 on "The Causes and Context of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests in the United States, 1950-2010."

"If you want to talk about sexual abuse of minors, you're talking about families, foster care programs, public schools," New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan said in a recent Sirius XM interview.

"You're talking about organizations, every religion, you're talking about public schools — it is a societal, cultural problem. There is no occupation that is freed from it." Continue reading

• Image: Supplied

The film claims to break silence on sordid goings on within the Church.

The French director's look at the sex abuse scandal that is engulfing the Church focuses on three alleged victims of Lyon priest Bernard Preynat, who reportedly molested over 80 young boys. Read more

"We don't believe it will make children safer, and in certain cases, we think it could make children less safe.

Any suggestion that a perpetrator may, in fact, confess is removed all but certainly by the imposition of a law such as this."

He was speaking after the publication of The Australian Catholic Bishops Conference and Catholic Religious Australia's Response to the Royal Commission into Institutional Child Sexual Abuse.

In the response, the bishops and religious said they agree with 98 percent of the recommendations and are committed to safeguarding children and vulnerable people, but they are adamant the confessional seal is inviolable.

The Royal Commission had recommended the bishops consult with the Holy See to clarify whether "information received from a child during the sacrament of reconciliation that they have been sexually abused is covered by the seal of confession."

The report labelled the suggestion of removing the seal of the confession as "inimical to religious liberty," not just for the Catholic Church but for other religions as well.

The Response states: "Children will be less rather than more safe if mandatory reporting of confessions were required: the rare instance where a perpetrator or victim might have raised this in confession would be less likely to occur if confidence in the sacramental seal were undermined; and so an opportunity would be lost to encourage a perpetrator to self-report to civil authorities or victims to seek safety."

Two of Australia's eight states and territories have introduced laws making it a crime for priests to withhold information about abuse heard in the confessional, while the others have said they are considering their response.

This means priests are required by law in those states to report abuse to the police when they hear about it in confession.

Source

• The Tablet
• Aljazeera
• CruxNow
• Image: YouTube

This is the fourth time Wilson has attempted to have the case rejected.

Last year he lost an attempt in Sydney's Court of Appeal to rule the charges invalid.

His barrister Stephen Odgers unsuccessfully argued his client was not fit to stand trial due to Alzheimer's disease.

Two separate applications were also denied by a magistrate and a Supreme Court judge.

Wilson is the world's most senior Catholic to be charged with covering up abuse.

He is accused of concealing child sexual abuse by Fr Jim Fletcher in the 1970s.

As an assistant parish priest, he worked with Fletcher, who died in prison in 2006.

Wilson has declared under oath that two former altar boys never told him they had been sexually abused by Fletcher.

He said he had no memory of one of the boys telling him in 1976 he'd been sexually abused as a 10-year old by Fletcher five years earlier.

He told the Court his first priority would have been to provide pastoral care to the then 15-year-old boy and his family; he would also have reported the allegations to his superiors.

In the current attempt to have the case dismissed, Odgers told the Court he would be making a "no case" submission which would "take some time."

Odgers asked the Court to include two character references to show Wilson had a tendency to follow Church protocol and report alleged abuses.

However, Crown Prosecutor Gareth Harrison said while he would not oppose the references, their evidence was too general.

In his opinion, this was at the heart of what the case was about: "Does the accused have the tendency to do that, and regularly do that?" he asked.

"What his attitude was to reporting matters in 1976 is not made clear in the statements."

The Magistrate adjourned the case to consider the possible inclusion of extra evidence.

Source

• ABC
• The Guardian
• Image: ABC

The UK Charities Commission said the Abbey had lost its pupil welfare responsibilities "as a result of continued concerns about the extent to which current safeguarding risks to pupils at the schools run by the [Ampleforth] charities are being adequately managed".

The Charities Commission is particularly concerned about the boarding school's management of sex-abuse allegations.

The allegations were made against 40 monks and teachers who had previously lived or worked at Ampleforth's secondary and preparatory schools and adjacent religious community.

The Commission says Ampleforth has not improved its policies enough since an inquiry into the Abbey and the St Laurence Education Trust (which runs the schools) was launched in 2016.

Harvey Grenville, head of investigations and enforcement at the Charity Commission, said: "It is of paramount importance that beneficiaries and others who come into contact with charities are protected from harm.

"We are not satisfied that the trustees of these charities have made enough progress in improving the safeguarding environment for pupils in the schools connected to the charities".

A specialist charity lawyer has been appointed as interim manager of both charities.

In a statement, the Abbey said the move would ensure "all our beneficiaries are able to flourish and thrive, reaching their full potential in a safe environment and protected from harm".

The Ampleforth preparatory school announced its closure earlier this year.

Source

• The Guardian
• The Telegraph
• Image: Flickr