Priest was ‘turned on by using the cane’

A Roman Catholic priest withdrew £182,000 from his Vatican bank account and went on the run in Albania after he was accused of sexually abusing schoolchildren in the 1970s and 1980s, a court heard. Father Laurence Soper, 74, a former abbot of Ealing Abbey in west London, skipped bail and flew to Kosovo when he was accused of sex offences including buggery and indecent assault on boys under 16, it is said. Prosecutors say the abuse took place between September…