An 85-year-old former monk and priest, Peter Turner, has died in prison while serving a sentence for sexually abusing children in North Yorkshire. Turner, originally from Redcar and formerly known as Father Gregory Carroll, passed away from natural causes on 6 February 2025 at HMP Swaleside in Kent, authorities confirmed.
Turner had been serving a 21-year sentence after pleading guilty at York Crown Court in February 2020 to 14 offences against three pupils, committed up to three decades earlier. The abuse occurred at Ampleforth Abbey, near Thirsk, and at a church in Workington, Cumbria. His sentence included 11 counts of indecent assault, two of buggery, and one of gross indecency with a child.
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This conviction marked Turner’s second prison term for child sexual abuse. In 2005, he was jailed for abusing 10 pupils at Ampleforth College during the 1970s and 1980s, with the youngest victim aged just eight.
A Prisons and Probation Ombudsman report confirmed that Turner died from a ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm. An independent clinical review commissioned by NHS England found that the medical care he received in custody was “of a good standard and equivalent to that available in the community.” An inquest on 24 October concluded that Turner died of natural causes.
The Ministry of Justice declined to comment on his death. Turner’s passing closes a chapter on one of the more notorious cases of clerical child abuse in North Yorkshire, which has spanned decades and deeply affected numerous victims and their families.