A FORMER Ampleforth Abbey monk and priest is today in custody awaiting sentencing for the second time for sexually abusing boys.

Peter Turner, 80, formerly known as Father Gregory Carroll, pleaded guilty at York Crown Court to 14 offences committed against three boys aged between nine and 12 years old. It was the second time he had admitted sexual offences against pupils at the private boarding school.

In 2003 he was jailed for three years for 17 offences against 10 pupils committed between 1973 and 1987.

His abuse of boys continued after he was suspended from the abbey and sent to work in Our Lady and St Michael’s RC Church, Workington, Cumbria.

Turner, now of Redcar in Teesside, showed no emotion as he pleaded guilty to 11 indecent assaults, two serious sexual offences and one charge of gross indecency with a boy. Six of the offences were committed in Ampleforth, the rest while working in Cumbria.

He was remanded in custody and will be sentenced tomorrow (Wednesday).

One of the three victims was in court to hear his pleas. Another is expected to attend when he is sentenced.

His barrister Nicola Gatto said: “His offences ceased once he was recalled from the parish back to the abbey. Essentially he has been dormant for about 18 years.”

She accepted that the nature and seriousness of his offences means the Parole Board will decide when he is released after what she called the “inevitable” jail term.

Turner was ordained as a priest in 1969 and was a teacher at the school then run by the Benedictine Abbey in the Hambleton Hills in North Yorkshire for many years.

He was suspended from the school and abbey in 1987 after he told the then abbot about a single sexual incident with a boy and was sent to Workington.

Today he admitted four indecent assaults and two serious sexual offences against a boy at Ampleforth committed in the three years immediately before he went to Cumbria in addition to the offences he had admitted in 2003.

The boy was aged 10 to 12 years old at the time. He admitted six charges of indecent assault committed against one boy aged nine or 10 in the first 18 months of his stay in Workington, and gross indecency and indecent assault between 1987 and 1990 against a second boy aged 10 to 12.