Royal Commission: Monsignor admits swearing 'deceptive' affidavit

By Catherine Armitage
Sydney Morning Herald
March 17, 2014

http://www.smh.com.au/national/royal-commission-monsignor-admits-swearing-deceptive-affidavit-20140317-34x47.html

John Ellis gives evidence to the Royal Commission.

A senior Catholic Church official has admitted he swore a "deceptive" and wrong affidavit for court proceedings in the John Ellis case, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to child sex abuse has heard.

The Archdiocese’s Chancellor, Monsignor Brian Rayner, apologised that an affidavit he swore in the court proceedings in 2004 was "deceptive". He agreed he had information about the abuser Father Aidan Duggan's appointments to the parish of Bass Hill between 1974 and 1978. Yet he had signed an affidavit conveying the impression the church had no evidence Father Duggan was at Bass Hill during the years Mr Ellis alleged he was abusing him there except for 1975. "If the affidavit is deceptive then I regret that aspect,'' Monsignor Rayner said. He said he did not prepare it and did not read it carefully nor take the opportunity to correct it.  

Sixteen years after they last had sexual contact, the former altar boy Mr Ellis visited Duggan at the Little Sisters of the Poor Nursing Home at Randwick.

The church had used the excuse that Duggan was too far gone in senile dementia to answer allegations against him as a basis for treating Mr Ellis’ claim of abuse as “uncorroborated”.

Mr Ellis has given evidence  that he saw a flash of recognition cross Father Duggan’s face, but the old priest said nothing. It was enough to make the  Monsignor Rayner, who’d served fulltime for 20 years as a priest in the military and was also at the meeting, well up.

“He made a groaning sound and appeared unable to communicate. He spoke no words at all while we were with him,” said Monsignor Rayner, now a parish priest at Gymea in Sydney’s southern suburbs. 

 “The situation was very moving. I became aware of how the witness had been subject to abuse over time but also from my own personal side where I have, since the earliest years, had a great love of the church and the papacy and the priesthood, to have seen a priest in this situation where he was now suffering from dementia, to think how with his noblest of ideals in his ordination, how he had ended up in this situation, that was very moving”.

 Monsignor Rayner who as Archdiocesan chancellor was the official church authority to deal with victim’s complaints, said he told Cardinal Pell about the amounts of money victims of sex abuse sought. But for an agreement to be reached, “finally the decision would have been made by the Archbishop himself”.

 He said he had “never doubted” that Mr Ellis was telling the truth about the abuse by Father Duggan, which began in 1974 when he was a 13-year-old altar boy and continued into his adulthood.

 The Commission has heard that in 2004, Mr Ellis and his wife, Nicola, nominated a figure of $100,000 to meet his counselling and accommodation. The church offered him $25,000 under its Towards Healing complaints process. Monsignor Rayner said he couldn’t remember where this $25,000 figure came from. He said the amount was “quite inappropriate” but it “did not help the matter at all” that Mr Ellis “always said, ‘Whatever you pay me I will take that off the amount when I sue’.''

The former Archdiocesan chancellor said it was the Archdiocese’s practice that no compensation could be paid unless the claimant signed sign a deed releasing the church from any further liability. “So that was the background. Why would we then increase it when it is not going to bring the matter to an end?”

 Commission chair Justice Peter McClellan asked Monsignor Rayner why the church could not make what it considered a just response regardless, since Mr Ellis had indicated he understood any amount he was paid would be deducted from any verdict he might win in court.

 Monsignor Rayner said “my hands were tied”. But he hoped that if Mr Ellis had been prepared to sign a deed of release, that “the Archbishop or myself would have come up with a larger amount to his (Mr Ellis’) satisfaction”.

 Mr Ellis did sue, and lost his case. It finished up costing the church $1.5 million after it voluntarily met Mr Ellis’ costs and made ex gratia payments to him of $568,000. 

Another Commission hearing began in Adelaide on Monday, reports AAP. A bus driver,  Brian Perkins, who worked at the Catholic St Ann’s Special School, went on to sexually abuse intellectually disabled children and had prior convictions. His background was not checked, the commission heard.

In her opening address, counsel assisting Sophie David said when Perkins got the job he had three convictions for sexual offending against children, dating back to 1956 and had received two jail terms.

But the school principal did not carry out a police check on Perkins who stayed at St Ann’s until 1991 when he was investigated in relation to pornographic photos of students, she said.

Perkins was the school’s bus driver, a volunteer in woodwork classes and did respite work for parents of students on weekends.

He was arrested in 1993 and bailed, absconded from South Australia in 1994 and was not extradited until 2002.Some 12 years after allegations were first made, he pleaded guilty to sex charges and was sentenced to 10 years jail, where he died in 2009.

Ms David said the hearing would focus the action or inaction of police, the school and the Catholic Church.The first witness will be a former student, now 38, who was aged between 11 and 15 when he was abused by Perkins.The hearing is continuing.