AUSTRALIA
Daily Telegraph
Cardinal Pell has said sorry over the Catholic church’s handling of altar boy sexual abuse case
JANET FIFE-YEOMANS THE DAILY TELEGRAPH MARCH 24, 2014
* Cardinal George Pell ‘sorry’ about the handling of the sex-abuse case of altar boy John Ellis
* Australia’s most senior Catholic says church sex-abuse victims were akin to Nazis, communists and other ‘enemies’ of the church
* Pell maintains denial he told victim Ellis church also ‘legally abused’ him over Supreme Court defence
CARDINAL George Pell has said he is sorry and admitted that he made mistakes in dealing with the case of former altar boy John Ellis who was sexually abused by a Catholic priest.
But he stopped short of totally throwing up his arms and denied that he had ever told Mr Ellis that he had been the victim of “legal abuse” after his case was vigorously defended in the Supreme Court.
Mr Ellis, 52, now a lawyer, has told the commission that Cardinal Pell used that term when he finally met the cardinal in 2009, five years after he lost his court case.
“I am unsure what precisely Mr Ellis meant by legal abuse,” Cardinal Pell said.
“I did not use the term legal abuse. I did not regard the mere defending the litigation as legal abuse.”
In his first appearance in the witness box at the royal commission into institutional responses to child sex abuse, Cardinal Pell said he was now “troubled” that the Sydney diocese, of which he was archbishop, had disputed in court that Mr Ellis had been abused.
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