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Susie O’Brien: Cardinal George Pell should step aside while police investigate child sexual abuse claims
By Susie O’brien
CARDINAL George Pell should immediately be stood down while child sexual abuse allegations are investigated by Victorian police. Revelations in The Advertiser on Saturday of the police investigation into allegations Cardinal Pell sexually abused between five and 10 boys are serious enough to warrant this move. Cardinal Pell has strongly denied the allegations, which cover the time he was a priest in Ballarat as well as archbishop of Melbourne. However, while I am not saying the cardinal is guilty of the allegations, the church cannot ignore the fact that more than a dozen detectives are investigating the matter, involving adults now aged from their late 20s to early 50s. Cardinal Pell remaining in his current position as the third most senior Catholic globally undermines all of the efforts being done within the church to heal and help victims of child sexual abuse. The number of alleged victims, the length of the investigation and the time span of alleged offences mean it should not be business as usual for Cardinal Pell and the Catholic Church. This matter has the potential to not only undermine faith in the cardinal, but in the entire church hierarchy. Members of the public as well as members of the church deserve better from an organisation that’s supposed to stand for compassion and caring for others. The people who made the allegations must also be prioritised ahead of the feelings of the cardinal. It is all very well for the cardinal to deny the allegations, but they must be properly investigated, and while this is occurring, the cardinal must stand down. If the church is serious about its Truth, Justice and Healing process, headed by the impressive Francis Sullivan, then it must remove Cardinal Pell pending determination of the claims. Indeed, the manifesto of the Truth, Justice and Healing Council points out that “many victims were not believed when they should have been”. It says the church and its leaders “concealed or covered up what they knew of the facts, moved perpetrators to another place, thereby enabling them to offend again, or failed to report matters to the police when they should have”. This cycle of abuse and reabuse must end. In my view, Cardinal Pell should also be forced to travel to Australia to front the royal commission currently investigating institutional responses to sex abuse, notwithstanding concerns raised about his health. Cardinal Pell has said he can’t travel to Australia to appear in person because of a heart condition, something the royal commission has accepted. As I have written in recent days, there is plentiful evidence to justify Cardinal Pell’s appearance at the commission in Ballarat. The royal commission has already heard evidence that Cardinal Pell was directly involved in moving a known paedophile, ignored a victim’s complaint and was involved in bribery. Despite his denials, questions remain about Cardinal Pell’s treatment of at least two victims, David Ridsdale and Timothy Green. Twenty years apart, these two men claim they told Cardinal Pell priests had abused them. That was bad enough, but now the cardinal is directly alleged to have been involved in child sexual abuse himself. The church has no option but to stand him down while the allegations are fully investigated by authorities. Despite it all, he remains the most senior Catholic figure in this country and the third most powerful Catholic on the globe. This is an outrage and a disgrace.
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