Senior Official Tells Royal Commission That Catholic Church Has ‘lifelong Responsibility’ to Child Sex Abuse Victims

By Janet Fife-yeomans
Daily Telegraph
March 13, 2014

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/senior-official-tells-royal-commission-that-catholic-church-has-lifelong-responsibility-to-child-sex-abuse-victims/story-fni0cx12-1226853715394

Michael Salmon, the director of professional standards for the church in NSW, told the royal commission the Catholic Church should be doing more for sex abuse victims. Photo Jeremy Piper Source: Supplied

CATHOLIC Church barristers cross-examined a victim of child sex abuse for four days in court despite having accepted he was telling the truth, the royal commission was told.

“That doesn’t speak well for the litigation process,” commission chair Peter McClellan said yesterday.

Church NSW director of professional standards Michael Salmon said he never confronted church authorities about it although he knew “all of the church authority … believed he was telling the truth.”

Mr Salmon also had no doubts victim John Ellis was telling the truth about being sexually abused from age 13 by the late Father Aidan Duggan.

Mr Salmon confirmed at the commission that the church’s own assessor had found in favour of Mr Ellis and a private investigator contracted by the church had reported he was telling the truth.

The royal commission into sex abuse is looking into the background to the civil court case, which was used as a precedent by the church to block all other abuse claims, and how Mr Ellis was dealt with.

Earlier the commission heard the Catholic Church should have a lifelong responsibility, financial and emotional, for victims who were sexually abused by its priests, a senior church official said today.

Mr Salmon told the royal commission into child sex abuse that he thought the church should have been paying many victims significantly more than they had been through the Towards Healing process.

Former altar boy John Ellis gives a victim's statement at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Sydney. Picture: Piper Jeremy Source: News Corp Australia

His remarkable statement came under questioning by the chair of the royal commission, Justice Peter McClellan, today.

Justice McClellan said that measured in terms of both human and financial cost, the effects of abuse could be great.

Mr Salmon agreed that the church should be willing to remain connected to victims of abuse and to consider their needs on an ongoing basis, instead of one payout and counselling.

"And that need might for some people require a lifelong response, mightn't it?" Justice McClellan said.

"It might for some people, yes," Mr Salmon said.

He said that the Towards Healing process, designed to provide pastoral care and compensation, did not do that. Payments of $50,000 were considered a lot.

Mr Salmon also agreed that it could be construed that the Towards Healing process used "strong-arm tactics" to get victims to sign away their legal rights to compensation for a relatively small sum of money.

He said the Archdiocese of Sydney had become more open to considering the real needs of victims.

The royal commission, sitting in Sydney, is investigating the Towards Healing response to lawyer John Ellis, 52, who was sexually abused by Father Aidan Duggan from the time he was an altar boy at the Christ the King Catholic Church in Bass Hill.

The commission is also looking at the subsequent court case when the church blocked Mr Ellis's claim for compensation and those of any claims following it by successfully claiming it was not a legal entity and could not be sued.

Mr Ellis had been willing to settle for $100,000 and the church spent $1.5 million defending his claim.

The hearing continues.