Call for mandatory child abuse reporting after cover-up at top Catholic schools

The call in the House of Lords for action came after a report found monks at Ampleforth in North Yorkshire and Downside in Somerset hid allegations of “appalling sexual abuse” against pupils as young as seven to protect the church’s reputation.

The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) also said the abuse spanning four decades was likely to be “considerably” more widespread than previously thought.

It made the claims in a scathing report on the English Benedictine Congregation, which has 10 monasteries in England and Wales.

Ampleforth and Downside are two schools linked to the monasteries, run at times by “secretive, evasive and suspicious” church officials who avoided reporting misconduct to police and social services.

Allegations stretching back to the 1960s encompassed “a wide spectrum of physical abuse, much of which had sadistic and sexual overtones”, according to the report.

Ten individuals linked to the schools, mainly monks, have been cautioned or convicted over sexual activity or pornography offences involving a “large number of children”.

Raising the scandal in the Lords, Liberal Democrat peer Baroness Walmsley said: “Is the Minister aware that the committee had evidence that one of the schools consulted its legal adviser as to whether it was legally obliged to report the abuse that it knew about. Having learned that it was not so obliged, it…