ROME
The Guardian
Ben Doherty
@bendohertycorro
Wednesday 2 March 2016
Cardinal George Pell will meet with victims of child sex abuse at a private meeting in Rome, just hours after stepping down from the witness box of the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse.
After more than 16 hours of at times combative questioning before the commission over what he knew of abuse within the Catholic church, Pell will sit down with some of the victims of that abuse at 11.30am, local time, in Rome.
“There are a few things we will say,” abuse survivor David Ridsdale said in Rome, “but we as a group have made a commitment to ourselves to be diplomatic and dignified.”
David Ridsdale was molested by his uncle, and Pell’s one-time housemate, the former priest Gerald Ridsdale, who is now in prison. Pell walked in support of Ridsdale into court in 1993, an action, Pell conceded yesterday was “a mistake”.
Many of those who will attend Thursday’s meeting were abused at schools and in churches in the diocese of Ballarat, where Pell grew up and where he was a priest in the 1970s and 80s.
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