AUSTRALIA
The Age
June 6, 2013
Chrissie Foster
High-ranking clerics must answer for the smokescreen they created in protecting criminal priests.
On the last two Mondays in May, we heard the Archbishop of Melbourne, Denis Hart, and Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney, give testimony to the Victorian parliamentary inquiry into child sexual abuse in religious organisations. They spoke on the sexual abuse of hundreds of “innocent people” – known to the rest of us as children – committed by priests and brothers in Victoria.
Discussion, debate and analysis have followed their evidence. I must add to this argument. I bear personal witness to experiences with both Archbishop Hart and Cardinal Pell which contradict their limited vision of events. Space limits the attack I would like to launch, so I will refer to just two instances, one relating to the cardinal and one the archbishop.
I first locked horns with the hierarchy of the Catholic Church in 1996, and the protection of children has meant I have not stopped challenging them since. In March 1996 I discovered that my eldest daughter Emma had been sexually assaulted by our parish priest, Father Kevin O’Donnell, who at that time was in prison after pleading guilty to sexually assaulting children from 1946 to 1977. Emma’s disclosures and, later, those of our second daughter, Katie, took his offending to his retirement in 1992 – amounting to 50 years of raping, sodomising and sexually assaulting, most likely, hundreds of children.
In Cardinal Pell’s written submission to the parliamentary inquiry, he stated: “Although he [Father O’Donnell] brought shame upon the priesthood and the church, he was buried with other priests in Melbourne. Had he been laicised before he died, this would not have occurred.” Seemingly the cardinal is lamenting that a career child rapist was not laicised before he died so, sadly, a criminal priest is “buried with other priests”. This sounds a noble and reasonable lament for a pious and forthright cardinal.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.