Police told priest’s alleged sex victim he had ‘insufficient evidence’

An alleged victim of a former monk who went on the run in Albania when he was accused of child abuse had a mental breakdown when police told him there was insufficient evidence to pursue his claims, a court heard.

The man told officers he was raped and indecently assaulted by Andrew Soper, 74, while he was a pupil at St Benedict’s School in Ealing, west London, in the 1970s.

During two police interviews in 2004 and 2007, the complainant said he attempted suicide and had repeated nightmares as a result of Soper’s abuse.

His mental health deteriorated further when he was told there was insufficient evidence to pursue his allegations because it was ‘one person’s word against another’, jurors heard.

In 2010 St Benedict’s paid the alleged victim £135,000 to settle a civil claim about Soper out of court after more complainants accused him of child abuse, jurors were told.

A year later Soper withdrew £182,000 from his Vatican bank account and ‘disappeared’ in Kosovo four days before he was due to attend a police station in the UK, the Old Bailey heard.

Prosecutor Gillian Etherton, QC, said: ‘[The complainant] reported the abuse to the police and was interviewed as said earlier in 2004.

‘He was originally told that there was insufficient evidence, it being one person’s word against another.

‘The same answer was given in 2007. The police failing to pursue the allegations understandably caused [the complainant] significant distress.

‘There followed a deterioration in his mental health.’

In 2004 the complainant told police Soper, who was ordained Father Laurence Soper when he became a priest, repeatedly groped his private parts after caning him.

He said the former abbot of Ealing Abbey in west London, also lifted up his robes and anally raped him in his office.

The man recalled another alleged incident when Soper performed oral sex on him and tried to kiss him while he was sleeping on the top of a bunk-bed on a school cycling holiday.

He said he didn’t come forward earlier because ‘no one would have believed you’.

‘I would have had the s**t beaten out of me by my father because he’s a devout Catholic,’ he added.

‘Who’s going to believe a 13/14-year-old boy against a priest?’

He continued: ‘I’m so screwed up by it all the thought of doing a life sentence for murder didn’t bother me.

‘I would just sit and rot in a prison cell and not give a s**t.’

Soper is accused of 19 sex offences against 10 former pupils at St Benedict’s, where sexual abuse and violence was said to be widespread from the 1960s to the 1990s.

Former headmaster father David Pearce and former maths teacher John Maestri have previously been prosecuted for child abuse at the school, jurors heard.

Soper was tracked down and deported from Albania after five-and-a-half years on the run in August 2016.

He has been expelled from the monastery of St Benedict of Ealing for ‘scandalous behaviour’ but is still a priest, the court heard.

Soper, formerly of Peja, Kosovo, denies 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.

The trial continues