Your Word against His": Pell Told Complainant, CathNews, July 9, 2008

"Your Word against His": Pell Told Complainant

CathNews

July 9, 2008

http://www.cathnews.com/article.aspx?aeid=8061

Writing to a man complaining about abuse by a priest, Cardinal George Pell responded that "in the end, it is your word against his."

The Sydney Morning Herald quotes an ABC report of a second letter from Cardinal Pell to Anthony Jones who had complained about abuse by Fr Terence Goodall.

"What cannot be determined by me however is whether it was a matter of sexual assault as you state or homosexual behaviour between two consenting adults as maintained by Father Goodall," Cardinal Pell's 2003 letter stated.

"Your word against his": Pell told complainant

"In the end it is a matter of your word against his."

Mr Jones maintained the encounter was not consensual and Fr Goodall was later convicted of indecent assault.

The ABC also revealed an internal Church report which found Fr Goodall had had sexual encounters with a 16 year old female, as well as Mr Jones and the other young male complainant.

Fr Goodall admitted to asking altar boys to swim nude and to propositioning young men, the report found.

Fr Goodall resigned on July 25, 2003, at Cardinal Pell's request. Cardinal Pell had threatened to use Church law to remove him.

At a news conference yesterday, Cardinal Pell refused to stand aside or resign over his treatment of Mr Jones.

Cardinal Pell did not inform Mr Jones of his mistake despite a July 2003 Church report that Father Goodall was guilty of other assaults, had a "lack of victim empathy" and was likely to reoffend.

Cardinal Pell said yesterday he had not contacted Mr Jones after realising he had misrepresented the investigator's findings, but he considered the matter closed.

He said "there was no cover-up". His letter was "badly worded and a mistake", "an innocent error" and an "overstatement".

Three months later, Cardinal Pell wrote to Mr Jones again. He made no attempt to correct his previous letter, and maintained that: "In the end it is a matter of your word against his."

The Church's director of professional standards, answering questions put to Cardinal Pell, said Mr Jones was not told of the psychosexual report because it was a medical document and could not be released under privacy laws. He said the other assaults were revealed in interviews in June 2003 but victims were not named, and none had come forward.

"I had no intention to deceive," said Cardinal Pell, who noted that the Church had taken the proper action against Goodall based on the two victims' claims.

"There was no cover-up. The accusations against Father Goodall were investigated both by the Church and the police and Father Goodall was stood down," he said. "Church authorities fully cooperated at every stage."

The archbishop said civil claims by Jones were resolved "by mutual consent" in the Supreme Court two weeks ago. He did not give details.

Meanwhile, in another story, the Herald reports that another Catholic priest and dormitory master at Boys Town, a school for difficult boys, has denied raping and indecently assaulting some of his charges.

Fr Paul Raymond Evans, who is facing 20 charges against eight boys between 1977 and 1988, yesterday admitted he sometimes hugged and comforted the teenage students in his dorm. He said he rubbed the back of the neck of some students to provide comfort or to help settle them, so they could go to sleep.

One alleged victim told Sydney District Court that during a 1979 camping trip in the Royal National Park, Evans touched his penis and then made the 13 or 14 year old do the same to him. The boy allegedly told some other students about it, one of whom reported it to the school hierarchy.