AUSTRALIA
The Sydney Morning Herald
March 7, 2019
By Barney Zwartz
The claims were lurid and unverified so Helen Last, the counsellor hired by the Catholic Church in Melbourne to assist victims of clerical abuse, agonised before reporting them to her superiors.
It was 1996 and the newly appointed archbishop, George Pell, had just set up the Melbourne Response to handle the rising numbers of sex abuse claims received by the archdiocese.
An ex-seminarian known as ‘‘Joe’’ came forward alleging that Pell and several other priests had, 10 to 15 years earlier, been having sex with Mannix College trainee clerics at ‘‘parties … involving young men’’.
Joe was not a strong witness. He wanted $20,000 for compromising photographs that appeared to be of Pell and others engaged in sexual acts, but could not produce the negatives. Despite this, Ms Last felt she could not dismiss Joe’s allegations.
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