Pell 'tried to bribe me', abuse royal commission hears

SBS
May 20, 2015

http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2015/05/20/pell-tried-bribe-me-abuse-royal-commission-hears

Cardinal George Pell tried to bribe an abuse victim, the royal commission has heard.

Cardinal George Pell tried to bribe an abuse victim, the royal commission has heard.

David Ridsdale, the nephew and victim of Australia's pedophile priest Father Gerald Francis Ridsdale, says he told Cardinal Pell in 1993 about the abuse.

He told the royal commission on Wednesday Cardinal Pell, a family friend, asked him: "I want to know what it will take to keep you quiet."

Cardinal Pell told a boy "don't be ridiculous" when told a Christian Brother was molesting children, the abuse royal commission has also heard.

Cardinal Pell has previously denied being told about the abuse but will have to make a statement to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse about what he knew.

Timothy Green, 53, said he told then Father Pell that Brother Edward Vernon Dowlan was abusing boys at Ballarat's St Patrick's College in late 1974.

"I said Brother Dowlan is touching little boys," Mr Green told a commission hearing in Ballarat. "Father Pell said 'don't be ridiculous' and walked out," Mr Green said.

Mr Green, who said he was 12 or 13 when he told Cardinal Pell, was himself a victim of Dowlan.

"Father Pell didn't ask any questions. He didn't say what do you mean or how could you say that. "He just dismissed it and walked out.

"His reaction gave me the impression that he knew about Brother Dowlan but couldn't or wouldn't do anything about it."

Commission chair Justice Peter McClellan said he expected the commissioners would make a finding about what Cardinal Pell was told.

"Although we normally don't make findings as to whether or not someone was abused, in relation to the allegation that Mr Green makes in relation to Cardinal Pell, which of course goes to the church's response to allegations, it's in a wholly different category," he said.

Counsel Peter Gray SC said he had been instructed that the church would not be suggesting to Mr Green that he cannot be believed, as it was not questioning victims at the commission.

"Cardinal Pell, as Mr Green has already noted in his statement, has a different recollection. Mr Gray has acknowledged that and that no doubt will be what the Cardinal says."

Another abuse victim, BAV, told the commission that after Father Gerald Ridsdale has abused him in a bedroom at the presbytery, Cardinal Pell, who also lived there, arrived home.

"I saw the back of Father Pell but did not know if he saw me and Father Ridsdale or not," BAV said.

Justice McClellan said Cardinal Pell would be asked to make a statement to the commission. Cardinal Pell has previously denied Mr Green told him about the abuse, after the claims were made in the media.

Cardinal Pell said in 2002: "At a distance of 28 years, I have no recollection of any such conversation. If I was approached and thought the stories plausible I would have informed the Christian Brothers."

Dowlan, 65, was in March ordered to serve at least three years of a six-year prison sentence for indecently assaulting 20 boys under his care at Victorian schools in the 1970s and 1980s.

"Three years in prison for abusing 20 boys and for all the trauma that he caused not just to the victims but to their families as well, was totally inadequate," Mr Green said on Wednesday.

Dowlan, who changed his name to Ted Bales to avoid the publicity of being associated with other convicted Ballarat clergy pedophiles, served five years in jail in the 1990s for historical child sex offences.