Lawyer: Church Instructed Me to Dispute John Ellis Abuse Report

The Guardian
March 20, 2014

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/20/lawyer-church-john-ellis-abuse-report

John Ellis giving a victim's statement at the royal commission in Sydney. Photograph: AAP Image/Royal Commission/Jeremy Piper

A lawyer accused of evading his “ethical obligation” not to mislead during a priest abuse case has told a royal commission he was working on the instructions of the Catholic church.

In a cross-examination at the child sex abuse hearing in Sydney on Thursday, commission chair Justice Peter McClellan questioned the ethical approach taken by solicitor John Dalzell.

The lawyer instructed the legal team, which disputed whether John Ellis had been abused by a priest.

The commission is looking at how the archdiocese of Sydney, led by then-archbishop George Pell, handled Ellis’s complaint that he had been abused while an altar boy by Father Aidan Duggan at Bass Hill from 1974 to 1975.

Dalzell was a senior associate with law firm Corrs Chambers Westgarth when they were employed by the archdiocese to defend the Ellis case.

The commission has heard that Ellis had been assessed by a church-appointed assessor, who found the abuse had probably occurred.

On Thursday, Dalzell said at least two dozen times during his evidence that he could not recall details of the 2005 supreme court case. McClellan queried his memory about the landmark legal decision.

Dalzell acknowledged he had no evidence to contradict that the church-arranged assessment of Ellis had met a legal standard of balance of probability that the abuse had taken place.

“Yet you sat in court behind your counsel while they attacked Mr Ellis’s credibility?” McClellan asked.

Dalzell said he recalled that Ellis was attacked on the causal link between the abuse and the damage he suffered.

Dalzell was shown a transcript of the court case and McClellan pressed him several times on how he had let the fact of the abuse be disputed.

“I can’t remember the reason but I do remember being instructed that the report wasn’t accepted [by his church clients] and that the defence was constructed according to those instructions,” Dalzell said.

McClellan responded: “Is that all you have to say to the suggestion that you had an ethical obligation not to mislead the court?

“Do you understand that to say you acted in accordance with instruction is no defence in relation to the suggestion that you, from your independent knowledge, had an obligation to the court.

“Do you understand that?

Dalzell replied: “I understand that your honour, yes.”