Diocese faces £8m bill over abuse after court defeat

A ROMAN Catholic diocese is facing an 8m compensation and costs bill after failing to overturn a ruling that it was legally responsible for a Yorkshire children’s home at the centre of a huge abuse scandal. The Court of Appeal yesterday upheld a decision by the High Court to find the Middlesbrough Diocese responsible for the management of the St Williams home in Market Weighton, East Yorkshire. The diocese immediately asked for permission to challenge the ruling in the Supreme Court. Another legal defeat would further escalate costs in a case which involves around 150 alleged victims – the largest historic abuse case the Catholic church has faced in the UK. The Court of Appeal confirmed the diocese – and not the De La Salle Brotherhood – was responsible for the management at St Williams. Although De La Salle, a Catholic lay order, provided staff at the home, the diocese has been found responsible for its management as it had power to appoint staff. The compensation claims revolve around alleged systematic abuse of boys aged between 10 and 16 who were placed at the home between 1960 to 1992 after being referred from local authorities largely in Yorkshire and the North East. Claims were first launched six years ago, when the home’s former headmaster, Brother James Carragher, was sentenced to 14 years in prison after being convicted of abusing boys at the home between 1968 and 1992. He had already been given a seven-year term in 1993 for other offences of serious sexual abuse at the home. The legal action includes abuse claims involving Carragher but also many claims against other staff. About 2,000 children and 500 staff were at St Williams over the 30-year period. Carragher and many other St William’s staff were members of the brotherhood. De La Salle’s legal costs are 1m, the diocese has a similar figure and the claimants’ are in the region of 2.5m. Compensation itself could run to 4m – with the entire amount potentially falling on the diocese.