Scottish Catholic Observer

Australia’s Cardinal George Pell has announced that he personally thinks child abuse victims should be able to sue the Catholic Church in Australia.

During a hearing of the country’s Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, a statement by the cardinal was read out by senior counsel Gail Furness earlier today.

“Whatever position was taken by the lawyers during the litigation, or by lawyers or individuals within the archdiocese following the litigation, my own view is that the church in Australia should be able to be sued in cases of this kind,” Cardinal Pell (above) writes.

The Church’s position on child abuse came under scrutiny in 2007, when John Ellis lost his legal case against the Church following abuse he suffered at the hands of Benedictine Monk Aidan Duggan when as an altar server between 1974 and 1979.

During the long legal process, which started in 2002, Cardinal Pell did not meet him and was offered gratuities of less than a quarter of the damaged sought.

Despite the abuse in his adolescence, Fr Duggan officiated at Mr Ellis’s marriage in 1986, and Baptised Ellis’s first child in 1987, to which Ellis described him as ‘someone who had been supportive to me, and was effectively the only priest I had any contact with.’

It was only after attending relationship support weekends as a facilitator and preparing a talk on ‘trusting myself and others’ that Mr Ellis recognised the abuse.

“When I wrote that talk I realised that what Fr Duggan had done was abuse and that it was wrong,” said Mr Ellis.

“After that I developed very strong feelings in relation to the abuse and this frightened me. I wasn’t sure how to react.”

Cardinal Pell is expected to appear before the royal commission next week as one of nine witnesses from the Catholic Church including director of professional standards NSW/ACT Michael Salmon and the cardinal’s private secretary Dr Michael Alan Casey.

The hearings concerning the Catholic Church are expected to last for a fortnight.

The royal commission has held seven public hearings so far, examining the responses and failures in responding to allegations of sexual abuse of children within institutions including the Salvation Army, YMCA, the Parramatta girls home and Hay Institute, and the Catholic church.

The commission has so far received more than 10,000 phone calls, 3000 letters and held more than 1200 private sessions with victims, serving over 450 notices to government and non-government institutions to produce documents.