AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald
March 26, 2014
Catherine Armitage
Cardinal George Pell’s morality has come under sustained challenge at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse.
Pell said his instructions to “vigorously” and “strenuously” defend claims by John Ellis that he was abused were intended to discourage claimants, so they would “think clearly” before litigating against the church.
The Cardinal has defended disputing in court whether Mr Ellis was really abused. Pell said his lawyers assured him it was a “proper” legal tactic and Mr Ellis was a senior lawyer who would have understood he was not disbelieved.
Pell admitted he accepted Mr Ellis’ allegations, just as the church’s own review had done, but even so he gave the instructions which resulted in Mr Ellis being subject to four days of gruelling cross-examination in court on whether and how he had been abused.
Gail Furness, SC, counsel for the Royal Commission, asked: “Do you understand now the impact it had on John Ellis, to have the very church that he had gone back to … to dispute that he had been abused?”
“I do”, Cardinal Pell responded.
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