Church Official Believed Priest Guilty of John Ellis Abuse
By Dan Box
A SENIOR Catholic Church official has contradicted the account given by Cardinal George Pell’s private secretary that the church had never accepted the truth of an abuse claim brought by the child victim of a Sydney priest. The victim, John Ellis, first approached the church in 2002, saying he had been sexually abused for several years during the 1970s by Father Aidan Duggan, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has heard. He initially attempted to resolve this through the church’s own “Towards Healing” process, the commission heard, before ultimately launching legal action in August 2004. In a 2005 email to the church’s lawyers, Cardinal Pell’s secretary Michael Casey wrote “the final position which the Archdiocese came to was that it was not possible to make a determination that Fr Duggan had abused Ellis as alleged.” “We can say the Archdiocese has never accepted that Fr Duggan was responsible for the abuse Ellis alleges he suffered, either under the Towards Healing process, or at law.” The church official who oversaw the Towards Healing process, Michael Salmon, today told the commission he believed Mr Ellis’s account and the Archdiocese of Sydney’s former chancellor had “apologised to John Ellis because he accepted the complaint.” A previous assessment of the claim, commissioned by the church, also found “the allegations of improper sexual conduct ... more likely than not occurred,” the commission heard. An independent mediator, employed by the church to facilitate the Towards Healing process with Mr Ellis, also told the commission he understood “the church authority had accepted the substance of the allegations.”
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