Vatican: SNAP Outraged at Pell "Trucking Co" Analogy

Gazzetta del Sud
August 22, 2014

http://www.gazzettadelsud.it/news/english/105180/Vatican--SNAP-outraged-at-Pell--trucking-co--analogy.html

Vatican City, August 22 - Survivors of clerical sex abuse are outraged by testimony from Cardinal George Pell comparing the Vatican to a trucking company that could not be blamed if a driver molested a hitchhiker. Pell, now the Vatican's economic honcho, made the remark while testifying via videolink from Rome to an Australian probe into historic abuse and alleged cover-ups when he was Melbourne archbishop in the 1990s. Saying it would not be appropriate for legal culpability to be "foisted" on church leaders, he drew an analogy between the Catholic Church and a trucking company, citing a hypothetical example of a case involving a woman who was molested by a truck driver. "It would not be appropriate, because it's contrary to the policy, for the ownership, leadership of that company to be held responsible," Cardinal Pell said. "Similarly with the church and the head of any other organisation. "If every precaution has been taken, no warning has been given, it is, I think, not appropriate for legal culpability to be foisted on the authority figure. "If in fact the authority figure has been remiss through bad preparation [or] bad procedures or been warned and done nothing or [done something] insufficient, then certainly the church official would be responsible." Nicky Davis from the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP) was in the audience of the royal commission during Cardinal Pell's comments. She said the truck analogy left the audience "open mouthed in shock". "We were literally saying to each other, 'Did he really just say that?'," she said. "He shows that he really has absolutely no conception of what is appropriate or inappropriate behaviour and what are appropriate or inappropriate things to say to survivors. Dr Cathy Kezelman from Adults Surviving Child Abuse said the "outrageous" and "appalling" analogy could do a lot of damage. "The victims are already in this process of being repeatedly traumatised. To have their experiences denied yet again...drives a knife into the wound and twists it yet again," she said.