'He Ought to Have Known What Was Going On'
By David Marr
George Pell ruled the Catholic church with an iron will and, even as victims of sex abuse came forward, steadfastly tried to protect it. The lumbering figure walking the length of Melbourne's Royal Exhibition Building to the sound of Handel's Hallelujah Chorus on the night of August 16, 1996, was in better health than he had been for years. He had shed weight. A little grey was showing under the mitre but, all things being equal, George Pell had 20 years ahead of him to fulfil Rome's mandate. He had been a contentious figure inside the church for years but his appointment to Melbourne exposed him to widerscrutiny. Australia was beginning to pay attention. That he broke the mould made him interesting. Catholic archbishops hadn't sounded like him for 40 years. He was deliberate rather than graceful. He had the bearing of a football coach rather than a divine. His face was chunky and his mouth surprisingly small. His voice was masculine but oddly refined: Oxford laid over Ballarat. Pell's promise not to play legal games was entirely empty.That he had so little charm was arresting. He seemed not to try to win people over. He was not a persuader. He spoke at that slow, clear pace headmasters and doctors use, a pace that says: if you fail to obey, you don't have the excuse of misunderstanding me. The threat is in the rhythm. He had a powerful man's habit of often seeming to focus his attention elsewhere. He didn't hug. He flinched from the attentions of the devout. He appeared to have sex well bricked up inside himself with the determination of a professional celibate. A week after Rome announced his appointment as Archbishop of Melbourne, a court lifted orders suppressing media reports of the paedophile ring of St Alipius. The media were ready. The stories were sober, shocking and detailed. Victims put their names to stories of abuse and betrayal. The archbishop-designate found himself in the thick of an ugly controversy. It was reported for the first time that he had lived in the St Alipius presbytery and walked Father Gerard Ridsdale to court. Stephen Woods, abused by Brother Edward Dowlan for years when he was a little boy and raped when he turned to Ridsdale for help, called for a royal commission and for Pell's resignation: "He should have known, he ought to have known what was going on." Pell held fast. "I was a junior curate. I was wetter behind the ears then than I am now. You didn't suspect people of those things then." The Victorian premier, Jeff Kennett, rejected calls for a royal commission. He told The Australian: "It's a matter for the Catholic Church to resolve itself with its constituency and with the community." He had a tougher message for the new man in private: "If you don't fix it, I will." As Pell began to speak - apparently for the first time - about the abuse of children by priests, he said the "hurts and wounds" of the victims were his highest priority. But he was fearless in his defence of priests: male, celibate and sacred. He rejected talk of a paedophile culture in the church. There were errant priests. Some were worse than others: "The very worst cases, almost sordid beyond belief, are not the whole picture among the offenders." He promised not to hide their crimes by moving them around. "It is universally recognised that it is an inappropriate way to deal with the problem." But he made no undertaking to hunt them out, to go into the schools and parishes of Melbourne to find how bad the situation may be. In one odd interview with the Herald Sun he seemed to say he would rather not know: "If a priest comes to me, I don't want him to tell me if he is guilty or not guilty, unless he insists on telling me. In which case I would have to act on the information." He declared celibacy not to blame: "The great majority of paedophiles are married people. All the literature suggests that celibacy is not directly related to paedophilia." He began to birch the media - as he would for the next 20 years - for "disproportionate and repetitious" reporting of the sex crimes of the clergy. He promised victims he would not play "legal games" but wanted it understood that the church was not a soft touch. "If we believe we are being sued for things that are not our responsibility or where we dispute or deny the allegations, we will certainly fight it." Pell conceded the church's approach to the abuse crisis had been a bit "spotty." "We are going to have to do better in the future." Television forced the church forward. In June 1993, the ABC's Compass revealed that the church had taken out insurance against paedophile priests and prepared the secret, hardline protocol of 1992. Within days the bishops' committee began working on a protocol more sympathetic to victims and tougher on priests. But it came to a halt because a provision in the draft threatened to expel from the church all priests breaking their vow of celibacy: "Priests, religious and church workers need to be aware that sexual abuse or misconduct on their part is not compatible with ongoing ministry in the church." The committee of bishops - renamed Professional Standards - resumed work in 1994 under Geoffrey Robinson, one of Sydney's auxiliary bishops and a late but passionate convert to the cause of justice for victims. Progress was slow. Robinson told colleagues: "People think turning around the church on an issue like this is like turning around a big ship. It's not, it's an armada." Lawyers who took up the fight for victims found no way through the formidable defences the church has built around its wealth. Pell's promise not to play "legal games" was entirely empty: the church and its lawyers play such games ruthlessly. They will not admit priests are employees. They refuse to take responsibility for priests' abuse. And the wealth of the church is locked up in trust that litigants cannot access. Keeping the whole thing out of court and in the hands of the church was fundamental to the protocol called Towards Healing, which was to be unveiled at the bishops' conference in late 1996. The church would assess the needs of victims; offer help and counselling; and perhaps give an ex gratia payment by way of compensation. The victims would really have no choice: either accept what was offered, or fight an almost impossible battle through the courts against a determined and very wealthy opponent, their church. Pell was taking his own soundings at the big end of town. At lunch one day the governor of Victoria, Richard McGarvie, gave him some advice. "You are going to have to deal with this problem resolutely. If you don't, it will bleed you dry for years - emotionally, and more importantly than that, it will bleed away the good standing of the church." Pell told the Victorian inquiry: "He made the suggestion that what we needed was something like a Catholic royal commission, to get a senior person to judge and evaluate these crimes, give him independence, and that would be the best way forward." Pell consulted Kennett and the police. Both were happy to leave it to the church. Pell's scheme would cover only priests in the parishes of Melbourne. He hired a QC, Peter O'Callaghan, to be his "independent commissioner" and on October 30, 1996, called a press conference to announce what he had named the Melbourne Response. And on that occasion he took what he regarded as a step of great significance for an archbishop. He apologised: On behalf of the Catholic Church of the archdiocese of Melbourne I would like to make a sincere, unreserved and public apology, first of all to the victims of sexual abuse but also to the people of the archdiocese for the actions of those Catholic clergy and others who have betrayed the trust placed in them by their parishioners. Lawyers battling to sue the church were scathing about Pell's Melbourne Response. One man representing 45 clients called it "a crude package of measures designed to entice victims to accept a dramatic reduction in their proper entitlements." He dismissed the $50,000 cap Pell placed on payouts as "an insult to victims." The Age also condemned the cap for not giving victims what they might need to deal with "problems in later life such as alcohol or drug addiction, and consequent loss of income and family breakdown." The newspaper declared: "The time for tokens is over." Pell did not budge. The Melbourne Response (the $50,000 cap) had one distinct advantage over the bishops' national scheme: a more direct path to compensation. But there were hazards everywhere for victims knocking on its door. First they had to promise not to disclose any information "in relation to the Panel's deliberations." That was understood by many to be a demand for absolute secrecy. Whether they were encouraged to go to the police would be a point of great controversy. They were certainly told that if they did, the Melbourne Response would have to cease work on their cases. Victims were not given lawyers. Priests were. Despite talk of O'Callaghan being a Catholic royal commissioner, he had none of the powers a commissioner has to ferret out documents and compel witnesses to answer questions. Stripped of the rhetoric, he was a lawyer working for the archbishop of Melbourne. His decisions were final. He was not obliged to give his reasons. Victims who convinced him of their bona fides were passed to two separate panels. One arranged counselling. The other offered money. The cap imposed by Pell meant even child victims of repeated rape would receive no more than $50,000. Payments came with no admissions of liability. Nothing was paid until victims signed away all future claims they might have against the church. If they hesitated, they were told this was "a realistic alternative to litigation that will otherwise be strenuously defended." Pell and O'Callaghan both thought the work of the Melbourne Response would be done fairly quickly. "That was reflected in the fact that the terms and conditions of my original brief were for a period of six months," O'Callaghan told the Victorian inquiry. He is still there. The bishops were furious with Pell. They would never forgive him for breaking ranks. "He was going his way and bugger the rest of Australia," said Bishop Pat Power. "But he's not a team player in that sense at all, unless he's the captain of the team and everyone else is following him." The bishops did not like him. All but a few deplored his brand of Catholicism. And no matter how high he rose in the years ahead, they would never elect him leader of the bishops' conference. Why he struck out on his own with the Melbourne Response has been the subject of intense speculation. There are those in the church who say this was the bully they knew at Werribee. Pell blames the bishops themselves for dithering. "In light of the urgent need for an effective system to respond to victims of abuse and the uncertainty at that stage about initiatives for a national response, I moved quickly." He was one of the first in the world to put such a system in place, an honour he has often claimed. And the Melbourne Response offered him what Towards Healing could never give: control.
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