Andrew Soper denies 19 offences of indecent assault, indecency with a child and buggery committed against 10 boys
The former head of an abbey of monks, who was extradited to England over sex abuse allegations, used discipline as a ruse for sadistic offending against young boys, the Old Bailey heard.
Andrew Soper, 74, denies 19 offences of indecent assault, indecency with a child and buggery committed against 10 boys in the 1970s and 80s.
As well as being the abbot of Ealing Abbey from 1991-2000, he was headmaster and senior priest at fee-paying St Benedict’s School in Ealing, west London, having been ordained as a priest in 1970.
He is accused of sexually touching and beating the boys, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, with a cane.
Prosecutor Gillian Etherton QC said the types of abuse alleged ‘range across the sexual spectrum’.
‘Caning was not only allowed at the school at the time you are concerned with, but it appears to have been a method of discipline used with regularity,’ she said.
‘This case is not concerned with the rights and wrongs of this method of chastisement.
‘It is about whether this method of discipline was used as a guise by the defendant to carry out what in fact amounted to sexual abuse – a method and ruse to gain sexual gratification.
‘It is the prosecution case that ‘punishments’ as described by the complainants in this case were carried out by Soper in entirely inappropriate ways and circumstances and on many occasions with what can only have been sexual motive.’
She said ‘both violence and sexual abuse’ by the adults in charge of the school was ‘sadly prevalent’ and had led to scrutiny in the past.
One alleged victim was too scared to speak out because the abusers ‘were like saints to me’, Ms Etherton said, telling the court another alleged victim suffered serious mental health problems.
She said caning and sexual assault were used as punishments for ‘fake reasons’ such as kicking a football ‘in the wrong direction’, ‘failing to use double margins’, and ‘using the (wrong) staircase’.
‘The school was a very strict one,’ she said.
‘He (a victim) described how he was aged about 11 when he was regularly sent to the defendant’s office at the top of the school building to be punished over matters that seemed insignificant.’
Another victim was caned upon his return to school following the death of his mother, she told the court.
‘He (the victim) described Father Soper as a “sadist”,’ she said.
The former Ealing Abbey abbot was also the headmaster of St Benedict’s School in west London
The court heard Mr Soper quit as an abbot in 2000 and moved to Rome, during which time victims started to come forward.
He was interviewed under caution upon his return to Heathrow in 2010, but subsequently failed to attend further appointments.
The court heard Mr Soper – who is no longer a monk but remains a priest – spent six years living in Kosovo, with a European Arrest Warrant issued for his extradition.
He was subsequently deported to the UK where he ‘vigorously’ denied the allegations.
Ms Etherton said: ‘The reality, borne out – you may find – by the evidence, is that the status of this defendant within the school together with the effect of his actions created a combination of fear, a sense of guilt, physical pain, shame, revulsion and knowledge of impropriety that not only had an extremely damaging effect on most of the complainants you’re going to be hearing from, at the time and in later years, but also caused many to remain silent for so long.’
The trial is due to last for three months.
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