Sex Abuse Royal Commission Fails Test of Fairness

By Gerard Henderson
The Australian
May 21, 2016

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I have had two encounters of the personal kind with the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, neither of which was satisfactory.

The first occurred on May 6, 2014, when I was walking to my Sydney office on Phillip Street. It was early in the morning and I was surprised to see former ABC Radio National presenter, producer and journalist Stephen Crittenden on the corner of Phillip and Bent streets.

Crittenden was dressed in a fine suit, well-pressed shirt and tasteful tie. I asked him how it came to pass that a one-time left-wing ABC journalist looked so CBDish so early in the morning. Crittenden replied that he had been appointed to a senior bureaucratic position at the royal commission based in nearby Governor Macquarie Tower.

At the time, it was known that the royal commission appeared to be taking a special interest in ­George Pell relating to his time as a priest in the Catholic diocese of Ballarat in the 1970s and early 80s, as auxiliary bishop in Melbourne in the late 80s and early 90s, as archbishop of Melbourne from 1996 to 2001 and archbishop of Sydney before his appointment to the Vatican in February 2014.

There had been several pedophile priests active in both areas of Victoria — particularly Gerald Ridsdale in western Victoria and Peter Searson in Melbourne.