Child sex abuse royal commission: Cardinal George Pell says he was not involved in discussions on compensation payments

ABC News
March 24, 2014

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-03-24/5000-for-abuse-compensation-grotesque-pell-tell-inquiry/5341294

Australia's most senior Catholic cleric, Cardinal George Pell, says he was not involved in discussions about compensation for a man who was sexually abused by a priest.

The former archbishop of Sydney has given evidence in front of a packed public gallery at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Sydney.

He faced serious questions about his part in the Church's legal battle with John Ellis, who was abused by Father Aidan Duggan in the 1970s.

Mr Ellis lost his case in 2007, when the New South Wales Court of Appeal ruled the Church was not a legal entity that could be sued - the so-called Ellis defence.

Today Cardinal Pell apologised for the abuse, and admitted to a string of mistakes in how the Church responded to Mr Ellis over many years.

However, he stopped short of taking full responsibility for crucial decisions of the Archdiocese.

Mr Ellis, a former altar boy, asked for $100,000 compensation for the abuse. He sued the church when he was offered $30,000.

Cardinal Pell denied claims from the former chancellor of the Sydney Archdiocese that he was involved in discussions about compensation payments, particularly when Mr Ellis lost his job.

"The suggestion that, after a man has lost a job of $3,000 a year, that I would agree to offer him $5,000 extra by way of compensation, I regard has grotesque," he said.

Cardinal Pell said he had many discussions about the Ellis case, but said he trusted his advisers and officials in the Archdiocese, especially when it came to money matters.

He told the inquiry that he explicitly endorsed the major legal strategy, to vigorously defend the case, but was not involved in the day-to-day running of the case.

Counsel Assisting the Commission Gail Furness suggested it was "inconceivable" that he was not made aware of compensation matters.

Cardinal Pell replied: "It's not a question of what's conceivable or logically possible. The fact is that I wasn't. I wasn't informed about any of this."

The chair of the commission, Justice Peter McClellan, questioned Cardinal Pell about the decision to pursue the matter through the courts, saying the cost would have been far in excess of what Mr Ellis wanted.

Cardinal Pell denied any knowledge of the matter, prompting a fiery response.

"You should be ashamed of yourself Cardinal," someone yelled from the crowd.

Cardinal Pell said he should have been more vigilant and should have exercised more regular and stringent oversight.

"As I think I said when meeting with Mr Ellis, if we thought we could have concluded the thing for $100,000 and that opportunity slipped away, most unfortunate," he said.

"I'm not the sort of fellow who runs around blaming people for misunderstandings."

Catholic officials have previously said Cardinal Pell knew about Mr Ellis's compensation request.

Last week Cardinal Pell's private secretary, Dr Michael Casey, told the commission Cardinal Pell had directed the legal team to be aggressive in its cross-examination.

Today Cardinal Pell said the legal battle had been "hard fought, perhaps too well fought by our legal representatives".

"I would now say, looking back, that these legal measures, although effective, were disproportionate to the objective and to the psychological state of Mr Ellis as I now better understand it," he said in a statement tendered to the royal commission.

There was a round of applause in the packed hearing room when Cardinal Pell was challenged to back up his statement that quite a number of abuse cases are never validated.

"You've said that in quite a number of cases, for example, in schools, the incidents are found not to be validated," Ms Furness said.

"I call for the data that supports that evidence."

Before turning to the Ellis case, the commission had questioned Cardinal Pell about the culture of the Church in the 1990s.

Cardinal Pell agreed that before the Towards Healing pastoral and redress scheme was established in the mid-1990s, some priests were moved between dioceses in the event of an abuse complaint.

"Unfortunately that was the case. If that happened, it would be very much by way of exception," he said.

He told the hearing the Vatican took a "sceptical" approach to complaints of abuse and accused priests were given "the benefit of the doubt".

"The attitude of some people at the Vatican was that if accusations were being made against priests, they were made exclusively or at least predominantly by enemies of the Church to make trouble and therefore they should be dealt with sceptically," he said.

"I think there was more of an inclination to give the benefit of the doubt to the defendant rather than listen seriously to the complaints."

Cardinal Pell also told the commission that sentiments similar to those in the Vatican were present among some in the Australian arm of the Church in the early 1990s.

"Not to anything like the same degree, I don't think, but it is a little bit difficult to know what people think on these issues unless they are discussed directly or they are challenged on them," Cardinal Pell said.

"I never heard - I think in many ways, the English-speaking world made a significant contribution to the universal church in this area.

"In dealing adequately with this, whatever the deficiencies, I think we were ahead of some countries."

He said when he became Archbishop of Melbourne he "moved very vigorously no improve what was a chaotic situation" surrounding the handling of abuse claims.

The walls outside the royal commission have been covered in placards from victim support groups, calling on Cardinal Pell to be accountable for his actions and detail his role in the Ellis legal proceedings.

Child abuse survivors said they would watch Cardinal Pell's appearance with great interest.

Dr Cathy Kezelman, the president of the group Adults Surviving Child Abuse, said there needed to be some clarity around the issue.

"We're all waiting to see what the archbishop's role was in this case and there's been conflicting evidence to date. What we know is that John Ellis suffered enormously through this," she said.

"We had an internal church process that acknowledged he'd been abused and yet when he sought a civil claim that was brought into question."

Care Leavers Australia Network chief executive Leonie Sheedy said her organisation was eagerly anticipating the Cardinal's evidence.

"It's so long overdue. I feel so sad about what happened to John Ellis and all those other people who have tried to get justice for the crimes that were committed against them," she said.

"They call it the Ellis defence, but it should be called the Pell defence. He's going to go down in history as the person who denied people justice."

After his testimony, Cardinal Pell is expected to leave Australia for Rome to take on a new senior role at the Vatican, which includes responsibility for preparing the Vatican's annual budget, as well as financial planning and enhanced internal controls.

The hearing continues.