AUSTRALIA
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
March 4, 2019
By Natasha Johnson
As an award-winning journalist on Australia’s premier current affairs program, Louise Milligan is used to tackling difficult stories and upsetting people in power, but her three-year investigation into allegations of child sexual abuse against George Pell, the country’s most senior Catholic, was daunting.
“Without a doubt this is the toughest story I have ever done,” Milligan said.
“This is a person who had immense political and cultural power so taking that on is enormous and very, very stressful.
“Being at the centre of this storm, it doesn’t get any harder than that as a journalist.
“Having said that, it pales into comparison with what this ordeal has been like for the people who made complaints about George Pell, and their families.”
On Four Corners, Milligan secured exclusive interviews with the family of a choirboy, (who died of a heroin overdose), that Pell has been convicted of abusing on one occasion at St Patrick’s Cathedral in 1996.
Pell has denied the offence took place and is appealing his conviction.
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