George Pell "Still Too Unwell" to Fly to Australia for Child Abuse Royal Commission

By Melissa Davey
The Guardian
February 4, 2016

http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/feb/05/george-pell-still-too-unwell-to-fly-to-australia-for-child-abuse-royal-commission

Cardinal George Pell in the Vatican. His lawyer said he would be willing to appear via video link in the royal commission hearings ‘as soon as possible’. Photograph: Andreas Solaro/AFP/Getty Images

Australia’s most senior Catholic, Cardinal George Pell, has for a second time applied to give evidence to the child abuse royal commission via video link from Rome rather than appearing in person, leaving victims angered and disappointed.

Lawyers for the victims told the royal commission into institutional responses into child sexual abuse that Pell’s medical condition, which has been revealed to them but not made public, were “very common” to anyone of the Cardinal’s age, 74.

Counsel for abuse victim Graeme Sleeman, Paul O’Dwyer SC, told the commission that Pell’s medical condition “fades into insignificance” considering that “witness after witness has had to spell out the most intimate details of their life in the witness box, sometimes not anonymously”.

He called for Pell’s medical report to be made public. His comments were supported by other lawyers for victims at a directions hearing in Sydney on Friday to hear whether Pell would be fit to fly and appear before the commission later this month.

Pell’s lawyer, Allan Myers, urged the commission to keep the majority of the medical report private, saying disclosing it would “lead to debate in the press of the medical condition of Cardinal Pell, and there is no public interest in that”.

Myers tendered medical evidence to the commission that said flying could pose a risk to Pell’s health, but said Pell would be willing to give evidence via video link “as soon as possible”. The condition is related to Pell’s heart, with the medical documents signed by two cardiologists.

Pell had been due to give evidence in person at the second stage of the Ballarat hearings in Melbourne late last year. But in December the commission heard Pell was too unwell to appear. He requested to appear via video link from Rome instead.

At the time, the chair of the commission, Justice Peter McClellan, refused Pell’s request. He said the commission would wait until February to see if Pell’s condition improved so that he could fly to Australia for the hearings due at the end of February.

McClellan said given Pell was due to give evidence on complicated matters, including about abuse that occurred in Ballarat, and the response of the archdiocese of Melbourne to reports of abuse in its institutions, it was preferable Pell appear in person at a later date.

McClellan said there had been technical issues when Pell had previously appeared before the commission via video link, which he did not want repeated.

Pell, who supported the paedophile priest Gerald Francis Ridsdale during his first court appearance for child sex offences in 1993, has always denied knowing of any child abuse occurring in Ballarat while he worked there as a priest and with a clerical group called the College of Consultors during the 1970s and 80s. Pell also spent time living with Ridsdale in 1973 but has said he had no idea he was a paedophile.

Stephen Woods, who was abused by Ridsdale and the convicted paedophile brother Robert Charles Best while a student at St Alipius primary school, said he was dismayed but not surprised by Pell’s application. “I knew this was going to happen,” he said.

A child sex abuse victim, David Ridsdale, had previously given evidence before the royal commission that Pell urged him to to keep quiet about his molestation at the hands of his uncle and then priest, Gerald Ridsdale. Pell has previously denied these allegations.

Gerald Ridsdale committed more than 130 offences against children as young as four between the 1960s and 1980s, including while working as a school chaplain at St Alipius, the royal commission has previously heard. He is now in prison.

On Friday David Risdale criticised the lack of transparency around Pell’s condition. Some victims still suffering the effects of their abuse had been required to give evidence before the commission, including under cross-examination by Pell’s lawyers, numerous times, he said.

“The lack of transparency in Pell’s medical condition is incredible considering the private details that we victims had to reveal in public,” he said.

“The need to have him in person is the same reason we needed to be in the presence of the court and processes.”

However, lawyers for the victims told the commission said it was also important the matter be resolved quickly.

McClellan will hand down his findings on whether Pell should appear in person on Monday afternoon.