AUSTRALIA
ABC News
Exclusive by the National Reporting Team’s Lorna Knowles
The Catholic Church is in damage control after one of its lawyers demanded that a child sex abuse survivor repay an out-of-court settlement because she spoke to the media about her case.
Lawyers for the Diocese of Wagga Wagga also sought a public apology from the woman for “untruths” she told to the local newspaper.
But after being contacted by the ABC yesterday, the Bishop of Wagga Wagga said he did not instruct the lawyer to make the demands and he would not be pursuing abuse survivor Gina Swannell for the money.
Ms Swannell said she was repeatedly abused by a priest when she was just six years old at a church in Urana, west of Wagga Wagga.
At the time, she was a boarder at the nearby St Francis Xavier school.
Ms Swannell was one of the original campaigners for the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. In 2013, she was one of the first to give evidence to the commission in private hearings.
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