Inquiry into Ampleforth College may re-open

1. Today, the Times reported that a failed inquiry into a teacher’s alleged abuse of boys at Ampleforth College may be reopened after four new witnesses came forward. The report says that the college failed to report alleged abuse in 1989 when children complained of being touched inappropriately by a teacher. He was asked to leave but police were not told and he was given a good set of references. 

On the 25th August 2016 I wrote a blog on how the Education Reform Act 1988, which placed a duty on schools to report "misconduct" by a teacher to the authorities. This Act did not apply to private schools until 1994.
 
The story demonstrates two features, that we have already seen in the football coach abuse scandal, which is steadily unfolding in English football.
 

1. The fact that abusers are convicted by the criminal courts does not mean that the allegations made against them at that time, represent all the allegations that will ever be made against them during their lifetime. Survivors of abuse do not magically appear, all at the same time and in relation to the same abuser or group of abusers.Disclosure is a process, not an event, and it is a road down which many cannot travel. 
2. The law of child protection, and in particularly mandatory reporting of "misconduct" has developed piecemeal over the decades and in 1989, it was a still a rudimentary system. See my blog on the 30th November 2016 on this subject.