AUSTRALIA
Sky News
Outside and inside the hearing room at the royal commission where Cardinal George Pell is in the witness stand, survivors of clerical child sex abuse are listening intently.
The hearing room is packed to its capacity of 100-plus and the cardinal’s evidence is being broadcast on screens around the foyer of the 17th floor in the Governor Macquarie Tower in Sydney.
Sometimes, such as when the cardinal makes a statement like ‘my own position is that you never disbelieve a complaint…’, there are sighs.
Sitting directly behind the long tables where lawyers for the commission, the church and abuse victims sit, is John Ellis – the man whose saga of sexual and then ‘legal abuse’ by the church is the reason for the hearing.
Ellis, a gaunt, nerve-wracked man, has told his complex story of how as a 13-year-old he was sexually abused by a priest.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.