Pell Should Concede Failings: Vic Priest

SBS
May 24, 2013

http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/1770552/Pell-should-concede-failings-Vic-priest

A Victorian priest says Cardinal Pell (pic) should acknowledge the church has failed abuse victims. (AAP)

Australia's most senior Catholic should acknowledge the church has twice failed victims in its handling of sexual abuse claims, a Geelong priest says.

A Victorian priest says Australia's most senior Catholic should acknowledge victims were failed, not only by abusing clergy, but by the church response to their complaints.

Cardinal George Pell will be the final witness in the Victorian parliamentary inquiry into child sex abuse when he gives evidence on Monday.

Geelong priest Father Kevin Dillon said church leaders, including Cardinal Pell, must recognise that the inquiry came about not only as a result of appalling abuse, but also because the protocols the church put in place to help victims had not succeeded.

Fr Dillon said he would dearly love Cardinal Pell to say: `On behalf of everybody in the official church I ask for forgiveness of victims, because in so many cases, not necessarily every case, we not only failed you initially, we failed you doubly by having some sort of adversarial approach to your search for justice and recognition'.

"We have had apologies for the sins of others, but there has been no apology for the fact that for many of the people who came forward looking for solace, comfort and indeed justice ... that hasn't happened," Fr Dillon told AAP.

Fr Dillon, who has had contact with more than 40 victims, told the parliamentary inquiry in February the church had been in denial over sexual abuse and put its own name and reputation ahead of victims.

Many victims groups expect Cardinal Pell will follow a familiar script when he gives evidence.

Judy Courtin, a PhD student studying sexual assault in the Catholic Church, expects Cardinal Pell will admit things that don't make any living witnesses personally culpable.

"If we look back at all the Catholic witnesses ... it's like they've all got the same scriptwriter, which I'm sure they have," she said.

"Really what I think we are going to get is the same."

Stephen Woods - a victim of one of Australia's worst pedophiles, defrocked Catholic priest Gerald Ridsdale - also expects Cardinal Pell will stick to the script.

"I suspect we will just hear a continuation of the lies we've had so far," he told AAP.

Melbourne Archbishop Denis Hart said the inquiry had allowed the public to hear that one of the church's protocols for dealing with abuse victims, the Melbourne Response established by Cardinal Pell in 1996, was a non-legalistic way of helping victims.

"It is good that the inquiry has heard our acknowledgement of the terrible failings of the church during the blight of child abuse that occurred prior to 1990, and of how we have changed since the 1980s and introduced a range of measures that support victims and prevent abuse," he said in a statement.