UNITED STATES
Waiting for Godot to Leave
Kevin O’Brien
Cardinal Pell, in open court, in front of victims of sexual abuse, speaking via webcam from the Vatican …
likened the Catholic Church’s responsibility for child abuse to that of a ”trucking company”. If a driver sexually assaulted a passenger they picked up along the way, he said, ”I don’t think it appropriate for the … leadership of that company be held responsible.”
What a completely stupid, crass, unfeeling, unchristian, unspiritual, vulgar and awful thing to say. One of the lawyers involved corrected Pell’s analogy …
Warrnambool lawyer George Foster of Maddens Lawyers labelled the comments as “appalling”.
“I act for people who have been the subject of sexual abuse (and) Cardinal Pell’s analogy given to the royal commission likening the church’s legal liability to abused children as that of a truck company whose driver molested hitchhikers is appalling,” he said.
“May I suggest a more appropriate one: A boss who knows or suspects that his driver deliberately flouts the road laws continues to send him out on jobs.
“Late one night the driver sees a hitchhiker, deliberately lines him up and runs over him. The driver gets out of the truck, goes back to the hitchhiker, further assaults him and robs him.
“The driver then gets back into the truck, reverses over the stricken hitchhiker several times and then drives off while “flicking the bird” to the hitchhiker through his open cabin window.
“The driver then goes back to the depot and tells his boss what has happened. His boss tells him to clean the blood and guts off the bull bar, to tell no one and if challenged say that it was all the hitchhiker’s fault.”
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