Church would not believe victims...

By Janet Fife-Yeomans
Australian
March 13, 2014

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/church-would-not-believe-victims-of-abuse-unless-priest-admitted-it-royal-commission-told/story-e6frg6n6-1226852506743

John Davoren leaving the Royal Commission.

Former alta boy John Ellis gives a victim's statement at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Sydney.

Cardinal George Pell signed a letter written for him and sent to John Ellis outlining it was his word against Father Duggan’s without having spoken to the priest the inquest heard.

A catholic Church official would not believe a man had been sexually abused for years by a priest - unless the priest admitted it, the royal commission into child sex abuse heard yesterday.

As part of the church's bungled handling of the claim by former altar boy John Ellis, the then-Archbishop of Sydney George Pell was told it was Mr Ellis's word against that of the priest, but the priest had never been questioned.

Father Aidan Duggan, who began his abuse of Mr Ellis at the Christ the King Catholic Church at Sydney's Bass Hill, had been diagnosed with senile dementia and was in a Randwick nursing home.

John Davoren, who set up the church's professional standards office in NSW, admitted drafting a letter for Archbishop Pell - now a Cardinal - to be sent to Mr Ellis which said: "I very much regret any hurt that you have experienced but under these circumstances I do not see that there is anything the Archdiocese can do.

"As you are aware, this is not to suggest that you are disbelieved but that it has become a matter of one person's word against another."

Mr Davoren agreed with counsel assisting the commission, Gail Furness SC, that Father Duggan had never been spoken to and there was no "other".

The commission is investigating the church's Towards Healing response to Mr Ellis's complaint and the subsequent court case that led to the so-called Ellis defence, which was that the church was not a legal entity that could be sued, blocking all legal claims by alleged victims of sex abuse by church personnel.

Mr Davoren agreed that he had drafted the letter for Archbishop Pell even before any assessment of Mr Ellis's claim had been made.

Commissioner Justice Peter McClellan said he was putting it "bluntly" to Mr Davoren that other material he included in a letter to a lawyer about Mr Ellis was done to prejudice him.

"Looking at it now, I can't disagree with that, no," Mr Davoren said.

The bungling continued after Mr Ellis, now a lawyer, had lodged a claim in the Supreme Court for compensation when the Towards Healing process seemed to have ground to a halt.