Appeal over sex-abuse home ruling

Middlesbrough Diocese, which is facing a potential 8m bill for compensation and costs, says the De La Salle Brotherhood, a Catholic organisation which provided teachers for the school, should take some or all responsibility.

Last year, a judge had ruled the brotherhood had no legal responsibility for the alleged abuse by staff at St William's in Market Weighton, East Yorkshire, which closed in 1992.

Jeremy Stuart-Smith QC, representing the diocese, told three judges at the Court of Appeal in London that many or most of the alleged acts of abuse were said to have been committed by members of the brotherhood working at the school.

It was this organisation which appointed the teachers, he said.

But although the De La Salle Brothers were in senior positions, Judge Hawkesworth found they were not employed by the lay order; it was the diocese that had the power to appoint staff.

The case centres around the alleged systematic abuse of boys aged between 10 and 16 from 1960 to 1992. The home had taken in boys referred from local authorities, mainly from Yorkshire and the North East.

The compensation case was 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.

Lawyers representing the alleged victims also say the Institute should, at the very least, be held liable for abuse perpetrated prior to 1973 when St William's ceased being an "approved school", instead becoming an "assisted community home".

Mr Stuart-Smith QC, said the De La Salle Brotherhood first became involved in the school in 1912 and, until it withdrew from St William's in 1990, it appeared to pupils that the brotherhood was in control.

The headmaster of St William's was always a member of the brotherhood and its senior management was exclusively picked from the brotherhood until 1976, he added.

Although St William's was owned through a series of trusts, Mr Stuart-Smith said it was clear that the school functioned "under the authority" of De La Salle, which exercised a "remarkable degree of power" over its management and highly-disciplined ethos.

However Edwark Faulks, QC, for De La Salle, described as "unassailable" Judge Hawkesworth's conclusion that the brotherhood was not legally responsible for the school's operations or management, either before or after 1973.

The hearing before Lord Justice Pill, Lord Justice Hughes and Lord Justice Tomlinson continues and is expected to last four days. The judges are expected to reserve their judgement to a later date.