A PRIEST from one of Britain’s leading Roman Catholic families yesterday admitted 20 offences of sexual abuse against boys at Ampleforth College near York.

Father Piers Grant-Ferris, 72, pleaded guilty to indecently assaulting 15 boys, all aged under 12, during a nine-year period when he was a teacher at Gilling Castle, Ampleforth’s prep school.

Grant-Ferris, a Benedictine monk at Ampleforth Abbey, North Yorkshire, was told by the judge at Leeds Crown Court that he faces jail, even though his crimes were committed more than 30 years ago.

The priest, a former Irish Guards officer and a keen mountaineer, is the son of the late Lord Harvington, who as Sir Robert Grant-Ferris was a Conservative MP for 31 years and Deputy Speaker of the House of Commons. Lord Harvington, a wartime fighter pilot, was regarded as the voice of the Vatican in Westminster.

His son taught at Gilling Castle from 1966 to 1975. He became known as the mountaineering monk of Ampleforth, Britain’s leading Catholic independent school, after a series of expeditions to say Mass at the summit of some of the world’s highest peaks.

Yesterday he denied six counts of indecent assault and one of gross indecency, but he admitted a series of offences, including the fondling, stroking and smacking of boys’ bare buttocks. He admitted striking one boy’s naked bottom with a stick and carrying out an anal inspection of another pupil. Nine of the boys had a thermometer improperly inserted into their bodies.

Grant-Ferris, grey-haired and wearing a dark overcoat, stood in the dock with his head bowed as each of the indictments was read to him. He made his guilty pleas in a clear, controlled voice.

James Goss, QC, for the prosecution, said that the Crown would not seek a trial in relation to the seven alleged offences to which the monk pleaded not guilty.

Grant-Ferris, whose conditional bail requires him to live and sleep at the abbey, will be sentenced next year after the preparation of psychiatric and probation service reports.

Judge Ian Dobkin told him: “The fact that I am granting you bail does not mean that I have decided what sentence should follow these pleas of guilty. All offences involving children are serious and the high probability is that prison will be considered in this case.”

Patrick Cosgrove, QC, for Grant-Ferris, said that the priest was “in no doubt over the view the court takes of these matters”, but suggested that the offences were at the lower end of the scale.

Ampleforth College later admitted that it became aware of the monk’s inappropriate behaviour 30 years ago. The matter was not reported to the police and Grant-Ferris was sent to work as an assistant priest at a parish in Workington, Cumbria, returning to the abbey in 1989.

Ampleforth was to use the same process a decade later with Father Gregory Carroll, who was jailed for four years by York Crown Court three months ago after admitting 14 indecent assaults against boys.

Both priests’ offences came to light after an investigation by North Yorkshire Police.

Father Cuthbert Madden, the Abbot of Ampleforth, said in a statement yesterday: “A great deal has changed in the years since (1975), so that today our schools have a framework of reporting, monitoring and pastoral supervision which provide safeguards for child protection almost unrecognisable from those applying in those days.”

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