AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald
CARDINAL George Pell says he knew nothing about ‘‘grotesque’’ compensation offers made by the Catholic Church to the victim of a paedophile priest and he blames staff for the aggressive handling of the case.
On his first day before the royal commission into child sexual abuse, Dr Pell said that if former altar boy John Ellis had been paid $100,000 to settle his abuse case it would have been ‘‘an excellent outcome’’.
The church eventually spent $1.5million aggressively defending the 2004 case brought by Mr Ellis, who was sexually abused by Bass Hill priest Father Aidan Duggan in the 1970s, from the ages of 13 to 17.
Dr Pell, the former Archbishop of Sydney, repeatedly denied knowing Mr Ellis had sought $100,000 in compensation, contradicting the evidence previously given to the commission by former key advisers.
He said Professional Standards Office director John Davoren was ‘‘muddled’’ and the former vicar-general and chancellor of the Sydney Archdiocese, Monsignor Brian Rayner, had ‘‘continually got hold of the wrong end of the stick’’.
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