18 years for paedophile priest who abused boys at notorious Catholic school
A Roman Catholic priest who sexually abused children at an abbey school which became the centre of a paedophile ring has been jailed for 18 years.
Andrew Soper, 74, is due to be sentenced for raping and groping pupils at St Benedict’s School in Ealing in the 1970s and 80s this afternoon.
Soper got a sexual thrill from caning young boys and ‘cunningly’ used corporal punishment as an excuse to pull down their trousers and act on his perverted desires.
The former headmaster used £182,000 from his Vatican bank account to flee to Albania when victims came forward after he moved to Rome in the early 2000s.
He was extradited under a European Arrest Warrant last year and convicted of sexually abusing 10 children following an Old Bailey trial.
Today (THURS) he showed no emotion in the dock as he awaited his sentence for two counts of buggery, one count of indecency with a child, 10 counts of indecent assault on boys under 16 and six counts of indecent assault on boys under 18.
His defence barrister Jane Humphryes, QC, said: ‘It’s fair to say Mr Soper maintains his innocence in relation to all the offences and describes his situation as a serious miscarriage of justice.’
The ‘manipulative’, ‘perverted’ and ‘sadistic’ former monk – also known as Father Laurence Soper – pulled up his robes to rape one 12-year-old pupil over a desk in his office and warned the boy he could be expelled if he ever told his parents.
His ten victims, who have been plagued by mental health problems after he abused them between September 1972 and July 1983, were initially afraid to speak out because their families viewed Catholic priests with ‘deep respect’.
They came forward after Soper resigned as abbot and went to live at the Benedictine headquarters at Collegio Sant’Anselmo in Rome in 2000.
He was highly regarded as a religious scholar in the Vactican and his views on the catholic church were widely sought.
One victim described how he had a mental breakdown when police told him there was insufficient evidence to pursue his claims after interviews in 2004 and 2007.
The man recalled Soper performing oral sex on him and trying to kiss him while he was asleep on the top of a bunk-bed on a school cycling holiday.
He said that Soper ‘ruined my belief in God’ in a moving victim impact statement.
‘I have tried countless times to take my own life as I just cannot cope anymore,’ he added.
‘I still hear Soper’s voice in my head, I can still picture him, I have flashbacks and nightmares.
‘I feel like I’m living in a black hole and I still can’t climb out of it.
‘He has damaged my life and I’m afraid that that damage will never go away.’
Another victim said he believed Maestri was running a paedophile ring at the school.
‘When I speak of a paedophile ring, [I say] that there were school masters, lay or clerical, who were or have been convicted of the sexual abuse of children,’ he explained.
‘Therefore it’s reasonable to believe that something like a paedophile ring was operating at St Benedict’s school.
‘I believe that the Benedictine Order should answer for the serial abuse that has gone on in its educational establishments for the last few decades.’
A third victim described the school environment as ‘poisonous’ and said: ‘You don’t really understand what was going on.
‘It was a horrible place to be and I think you came to the point when most people just said this is a hard part of my life and I want to get through it.
‘It was a dictatorship.’
The court heard pupils were caned, beaten with jocari bats and forced to do severe manual labour such as moving logs until they dropped.
Soper has been expelled from the monastery of St Benedict of Ealing for ‘scandalous behaviour’.
He is due to be sentenced today (THURS) for two counts of buggery, one count of indecency with a child, 10 counts of indecent assault on boys under 16 and six counts of indecent assault on boys under 18.
mfl
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