AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald
March 26, 2014
Kieran Tapsell
Remember Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol? Ebenezer Scrooge is a cantankerous miser who thinks Christmas is all humbug. He is visited by the ghost of his deceased business partner, and, as a result of a series of apparitions, he has a change of heart. He decides to spend the rest of his life being generous.
Cardinal George Pell never thought that the claims of clergy sexual abuse victims were humbug, although a number of his colleagues in the Vatican certainly did. In October 1996, as archbishop of Melbourne, Pell set up the Melbourne Response for dealing with the victims of sexual abuse by clergy and others. It provided for an independent tribunal to determine the amount payable to victims, but it had a cap of $50,000. The other scheme, Towards Healing, set up by his fellow bishops, had a provision for negotiating and mediating compensation, but with no cap. In 2001, Pell became the archbishop of Sydney, where he decided to continue the Towards Healing system.
John Ellis was an altar boy at the Bass Hill parish where he was sexually abused from the age of 13 by Father Aidan Duggan. Ellis became a gifted lawyer and a partner in a prestigious Sydney law firm. As a result of psychological problems, he lost his job, and in 2002 he approached the Sydney Archdiocese through its Towards Healing program about his difficulties. An assessor, Michael Eccleston, was appointed to look into the claim, and in a report that Justice Peter McLellan, heading the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse, described as ”legally perfect”, Eccleston found that on the balance of probabilities, Ellis had been abused by Duggan, and his psychological difficulties could be traced to the abuse.
Ellis offered to settle the claim for $100,000 in the Towards Healing process, but that was rejected.
He started proceedings to extend the limitation period, naming Pell, the trustees of the archdiocese and Duggan as defendants. He made a formal offer to settle for $750,000, which was also rejected. Duggan in the meantime died, and the case against the other two went all the way to the High Court. Pell and the trustees of the archdiocese won the case – after spending $756,000 on lawyers’ fees – with findings that the ”Catholic Church” did not exist in law, that Pell was not liable for any negligence of his predecessors, and as the trustees had no role in the appointment of priests, they were not liable either. Ellis was ordered to pay costs, estimated on a party/party basis at $500,000.
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