Damian Murray tells Westminster Confidential about his long battle with the Roman Catholic charity which covered up child sex abuse for 11 years

This is a story of the concealment and denial of child sex abuse by a charismatic principal of a college and religious charity who escaped justice in his lifetime and the failure of many organisations, including the Charity Commission and the charity to do anything about it.

Father Kevin O’Neill, a Marist priest, was principal of the Roman Catholic St Mary’s College in Blackburn. It was closed down in 2022 with £8.2 million debts reportedly caused by falling student numbers. It had been propped up by the last Tory government with emergency funding since 2020.

He was principal of the college from 1978 to 1993 and worked in Blackburn since 1964. He was born in Barking, east London and attended the Roman Catholic St Mary’s College in Middlesbrough going on to a get a degree at Christ’s College, Cambridge.

Damian was a pupil at the school between 1970 and 1977 and only discovered years later when a former pupil Graham Caveney revealed in a memoir that he had been sexually assaulted by O’Neill when he was a pupil there. It was then he realised O’Neill, as he long suspected, had been trying to groom him. The book, The Boy with Perpetual Nervousness was reviewed in The Guardian in 2017. See here.

Unlike Graham Caveney he was never sexually assaulted. It was in 2017 -seven years ago – that he started putting in a complaint to the Charity Commission and the Department for Education only to discover that neither were keen to take action. That is what led him to complain via his MP to the Parliamentary Ombudsman who have been the only people to do something about it

His view of the process is scathing. “This tortuously extended process also uncovered to me the worryingly close personal and organisational relationships actively fostered and maintained between the UK Roman Catholic Church and both the DfE and the Commission. It has shown in my view the
Commission in particular to be proudly unaccountable, intransigent, incompetent and
completely unfit for purpose.”

The cover up by the Marist priests is as bad as the actual child sexual abuse. When it was admitted in 1993 none of the governors of the school were apparently told and the principal was packed off to the United States on the grounds he was sick. When he died back in the UK in 2011 after getting dementia a celebratory mass was held at the school and the Lancashire Evening Telegraph is full of glowing tributes to him from former pupils with his nickname ” the Rev Kev” prominently mentioned. None of the pupils would have known about his dirty secret.

As bad as that the school in 2008 named a new £2.5 million arts centre in his honour – the O’Neill Academy for Performing Arts – which is now in use as a community venue.

And as late as 2024 the accounts of Marist society a curious note reveals :“At the start of 2023, the Charity was informed by the RLSS [ Religious Life Safeguarding Service] of an historic allegation made against a deceased member of the Society. The allegation was immediately investigated with all relevant parties (including the Charity Commission) notified of the event. After a full investigation and professional advice, the victim received a private financial settlement of £30,000 in full and final settlement of the claim. The RLSS has now closed this case.”

Damian says the charity ” deliberately lied about and concealed O’Neill’s abuse from the police; from school and charity regulators; from charitable donors and beneficiaries; from current, former and prospective staff, pupils and parents at St Mary’s College from other potential victims of O’Neill’s grooming or abuse; and from the wider public.”

He said :”The Diocese of Middlesbrough, the Department for Education and the Charity Commission have all failed to demonstrate effective, timely, or appropriate oversight of the Marist Fathers at any time
since the abuse was disclosed in 1993. Between 2017 and 2020 when I brought these important concerns to their attention in great detail and in line with their statutory or other formal responsibilities, these allegedly independent regulators have blankly refused to address any of them directly. They have simply chosen to turn a blind eye, both to O’Neill’s sexual abuse of a child in his care and to its long-term, deliberate concealment by the Marist Fathers.”

He managed to send his evidence to the national child sex abuse inquiry in the UK headed by Professor Alexis Jay about the case, though by that stage its formal hearings were closed. The inquiry has published a wider critical report on child sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church.

The Charity Commission says it is beyond its power to do anything about a charity’s role in “historic ” cases of child sexual abuse but this will be tested in a judicial review it is bringing against the Parliamentary Ombudsman claiming it is exceeding its powers in this case.

Blackburn is not alone in suffering child sexual abuse at the hands of Marist Fathers or the associated Marist Brothers. The Royal Commission into child sex abuse in Australia reported in 2014 on cases in schools in Queensland and New South Wales – one involving 19 boys – and in New Zealand nine Marist brothers were convicted of child sexual abuse.

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