Shorten: Treat Abuse Victims with Respect, Not Just Legal Strategy

By Jared Owens
The Australian
May 22, 2015

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/in-depth/shorten-treat-abuse-victims-with-respect-not-just-legal-strategy/story-fngburq5-1227365039504

A protester outside the Royal Commission into Institutional Child Sexual Abuse in Ballarat. Source: News Corp Australia

Bill Shorten has urged the Catholic Church to treat sex-abuse victims “with respect, not just legal strategy” as it considers interrogating survivors to prevent an adverse royal commission finding against its most senior Australian cleric, George Pell, and other senior clergy.

The move would represent an abrupt reversal of its previous decision not to cross-examine victims and follows warnings from commission chairman Peter McClellan that the probe into institutional responses to child sexual abuse will likely be asked to make findings about claims that Cardinal Pell dismissed complaints by two victims of pedophile priests.

Cardinal Pell has repeatedly denied these allegations, issuing a statement from the Vatican yesterday attacking “false and misleading headlines” and pledging complete co-operation with the royal commission.

The Opposition Leader today cautioned the church is being judged by how it deals with abuse survivors.

“The whole Church isn’t judged by the standards of some, the errant clergy who have done this are terrible and wicked people. But it’s how we deal with the harm once we know it’s happened, that’s what judges an institution, that’s what judges all of us,” Mr Shorten said in Melbourne.

“The victims and survivors have to be treated with respect, not just legal strategy and I do believe that George Pell should help the royal commission and if that means coming back to Australia to cooperate with the royal commission, he should.

“The pain has gone on too long and we all have to stand up.”

Cardinal Pell’s successor as Archbishop of Sydney, Anthony Fisher, said the Cardinal had “entirely cooperated” with the commission despite moving on to a senior role in Rome.

“Any time they have asked him to give testimony he has done so. I expect he would again if they ask him to come back or if they asked him to have a video-link as they did last time that he would do so,” the Archbishop told ABC Radio.

In the statement, Cardinal Pell said he could not recall a 1974 conversation with victim Timothy Green, in which he allegedly responded to revelations of a pedophile priest by saying “Don’t be ridiculous”, and denied attempting to bribe David Ridsdale, nephew and victim of priest Gerald Ridsdale, for his silence.

The church’s lawyers have told the commission a further statement from Cardinal Pell will be willingly provided if it issues a specific request, prompting Justice McClellan to respond that the church also had a responsibility to provide evidence that it wanted on the public record.

The lawyers foreshadowed recalling some victims who had given evidence so they could be cross-examined, a move that would abandon its previous practice of not questioning them “unnecessarily”.