George Pell: church had 'predisposition not to believe' children who complained about priests

By Ben Doherty And Stephanie Kirchgaessner
Guardian
February 29, 2016

http://tinyurl.com/zcmo4s9

The Catholic Church was more concerned with protecting its own reputation than helping victims of clergy abuse, and had a “predisposition not to believe” children who made complaints, Cardinal George Pell has told the royal commission into institutional responses to sexual child abuse in Australia.

“At that stage, the instinct was more to protect the institution, the community of the church, from shame,” he told the commission in Sydney via videolink from Rome.

On the first day of four scheduled days of evidence before Australia’s royal commission on Monday, Pell, Australia’s most senior Catholic, conceded the church’s handling of child sexual abuse in the case of paedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale was a “catastrophe”.

“I’m not here to defend the indefensible, the church has made enormous mistakes and is working to remedy those, but the church has in many places, certainly in Australia, has mucked things up, has let people down. I’m not here to defend the indefensible.”

Pell is Prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy of the Holy See, widely reportedly as the third-ranking position in the Vatican - a title he disputed in his evidence on Monday. He has already appeared twice before this commission.

For this third appearance, the cardinal was given dispensation to give evidence by videolink to the commission in Sydney from the Hotel Quirinale in Rome after church doctors ruled he was too ill to fly. The 74-year-old Pell has a heart condition.

A group of 15 survivors travelled from Australia to Rome to watch the testimony – a decision that survivor Paul Levey described as an attempt to make Pell feel something of the pressure he might have felt in Australia. They were seated just across the room from the cardinal. Some had t-shirts that said “Stop the silence” while another, Peter Blenkiron, wore a green shirt with a picture of a young boy on it.

Dressed in a clerical collar and black jacket, and seated before a grey curtain, Pell appeared to sit alone, before a lone microphone and a glass of water. His Companion of the Order of Australia medal was pinned to his left collar. The room was not full, but the testimony was attended by about 70 journalists, along with the survivors and various priests.

Pell swore on a Bible his evidence would be truthful. Under questioning, he was not discursive but spoke confidently, only occasionally tripped up by delays in the audio transmission and in documents being provided to him.

During his first morning of evidence, counsel assisting the commission Gail Furness focused on Pell’s early career in the priesthood, particularly during his time as an assistant parish priest in Swan Hill, and a parish priest in Ballarat, in regional Victoria.

Pell was fiercely critical of Bishop Ronald Mulkearns, the former bishop of Ballarat who gave evidence to the committee last week. Mulkearns destroyed incriminating documents before a Victorian parliamentary committee, Pell said, something he believed was “unacceptable”.

He condemned Mulkearns’ handling of the case of notorious paedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale, who raped children across in church institutions across Victoria, protected by the church, which moved him to new parishes as new complaints emerged.

“The way he [Ridsdale] was dealt with was a catastrophe,” Pell said. “A catastrophe for the victims, and a catastrophe for the church. If effective action had been taken earlier, an enormous amount of suffering would have been avodied.”

“He [Bishop Mulkearns] shifted – gave him [Ridsdale] chance after chance after chance, shifted him around and initially at least trust excessively, in the possible benefits of psychological help [for Ridsdale’s paedophilic behaviour].”

Ridsdale’s nephew, David Ridsdale, who was abused by him, was among those survivors watching Pell in Rome. “Survivors are together and respectful as usual,” he wrote while watching the evidence.

Pell said in the early 1970s, when he first heard allegations of priests sexually abusing children, he was “strongly inclined” to believe the priests’ version of events.

In 1972 he became aware of allegations Monsignor John Day had been sexually abusing children. But he was also aware Day had denied the allegations.

“I must say, in those days, if a priest denied such activity, I was very strongly inclined to accept the denial,” Pell said.

The church had a “predisposition not to believe” children who made complaints against priests, he said.

But he said the church had improved its response to abuse claims, citing Australia’s Melbourne Response and Towards Healing protocols as demonstration of the church’s commitment to assisting victims of clergy and church-related abuse.

“There are very few countries in the world who have advanced as far as the Catholic church has in Australia in putting procedures into place nearly 20 years ago.”

“I think the faults overwhelmingly have been more personal faults, personal failures, rather than structures.”

The latter half of Pell’s evidence on Monday morning was dominated by interrogation over his knowledge of offending by Christian Brothers at St Alipius primary school and St Patrick’s college in Ballarat in the early 1970s, when Pell was episcopal vicar there.

A religious community within the Catholic church, the Christian Brothers primarily work in educational facilities for children.

In all, 281 individual members of the Christian Brothers in Australia have been subject to one or more claims or substantiated complaints of child sexual abuse: 45% of that abuse occurred in Tasmania or Victoria, the commission heard last week.

Furness focused on the crimes of Ballarat brothers Gerald Leo Fitzgerald, who was forced to resign from teaching and has since died, and Ted Dowlan, who was eventually jailed for offences against 31 boys.

The boys who were abused by brothers Fitzgerald and Dowlan were referred to by other students as their “bum buddies”, the commission heard. Pell said he had never heard that term.

Pell said he was made aware Fitzgerald had swum naked with boy students.

“I had heard, at the break-up at the end of the year, they did swim naked.”

It was, Pell, said, common knowledge that the swimming incident had occurred. Pell said the incident was unusual, and an “imprudent” act but “no improprieties were every alleged to me”.

It was put to Pell that Dowlan’s offending was also “common knowledge”, was also the subject of complaints by parents, and gossiping amongst students, who “sniggered” the brother was “touching the boys again”.

Pell said he only heard “fleeting rumours” to “misbehaviour by Dowlan which I concluded might have been paedophilic activity”.

He agreed that sexual offending at the school’s was known to a “significant number” of people in the community.

At the end of evidence in the Verdi room, Pell shook hands with two journalists and nodded his head at them. Survivors said he had tried to make eye contact but that his gaze was not reciprocated.

In Rome Anthony Foster, whose two daughters, Emma and Katie, were abused by a paedophile priest, said that Furness had used her four hours with Pell to set the groundwork for a few more days of testimony.

“There was a clear establishment that everyone around him knew,” Foster said.

Paul Levey, an abuse survivor, said he hoped the commission still had some “trump cards” up their sleeve.

Andrew Collins, who survived sexual abuse by four separate men when he was a child in Ballarat – when he was 7, 11, 12, and 14, by a teacher, a priest, and two monks – said he was most looking forward to survivors’ own solicitors putting questions to Pell.

His own history was not all that unusual, he said, given that most victims had been abused by various people at the time.

“Nearly every child would have come into contact with a paedophile - and not just Catholics - but they laid a foundation,” he said.

Pell will resume his evidence on Tuesday.