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‘sociopathic Lack of Empathy’: Parents of Victims Tell of How George Pell ‘crushed’ Them

By Phoebe Loomes
News.Com.AU
February 27, 2019

https://www.news.com.au/national/victoria/courts-law/sociopathic-lack-of-empathy-parents-of-victims-tell-of-how-george-pell-crushed-them/news-story/13e53daad82f3d10b1cb5711e06f96ff

were sexually abused by a Catholic priest have spoken about his “sociopathic lack of empathy”.

Chrissie and Anthony Foster said the Catholic leader “crushed” them when they went to see him in 1997 about the abuse of their daughters Emma and Katie by priest Kevin O’Donnell who presided over St Mary’s Church in Dandenong, Melbourne, from 1958 to 1986.

When the Fosters approached Archbishop Pell about the horrific sexual abuse of two of their three daughters, the couple said he “bullied” them, and they were shocked by his aggression.

“In our interactions with the now cardinal, Archbishop Pell, we experienced a sociopathic lack of empathy,” Mr Foster told the ABC’s 7.30 before his death in 2017.

“And when we went to them, went to George Pell, he just crushed us,” Ms Foster added. “He just bullied us and spoke over us.”

After being repeated raped by O’Donnell, Emma became addicted to drugs, had eating disorders and self-harmed before overdosing on medication at 26. Katie was hit by a car after a drinking binge in 1999, leaving her brain damaged.

Ms Foster expanded on her comments last night to Leigh Sales on ABC’s 7.30.

“The offender was in prison, pleaded guilty to 31 years of offending, there seemed to be no argument about the perpetrator’s guilt and the offences against our daughter and yet, Cardinal Pell, archbishop then, had absolutely no sympathy or understanding or anything about it,” Ms Foster said.

“He just was angry and was jumping down our throats, telling us to prove it in court or substantiate what we were saying, and of course we had no proof because it’s just our daughter’s word against the paedophile.

“But now, I look at it under this verdict that he’s received, and I think, oh, my goodness, you know, he had a vested interest in shutting us up because he himself was a paedophile as well, and he didn’t want any talk about paedophile priests at all.”

After a trial in Melbourne in December — that was not reported on until yesterday because of court suppression orders — Pell was sensationally found guilty of five counts of the sexual abuse of two choirboys.

Those abuses include one count of sexual penetration of a child under the age of 16 and four counts of indecent assault of a child under the age of 16. The convictions relate to Pell’s offending against the two boys when they were 13 years old.

Chrissie Foster was nominated for Australian of the Year in 2019 after campaigning for survivors of Church sexual abuse. Picture: David GeraghtySource:News Corp Australia

Chrissie Foster and former prime minister Julia Gillard during the National Apology to Victims and Survivors of Institutional Child Sexual Abuse. Picture: Kym SmithSource:News Corp Australia

PELL’S EVIL SCHEME THAT CRUSHED VICTIMS

As sexual abuse cases against priests began to surface in Australia and around the world with increasing rampancy, Pell engineered The Melbourne Response. This would be a church-sanctioned, in-house way to deal with victims of child sex abuse.

The Melbourne Response, engineered by a now convicted paedophile, put blocks in place to assure that victims could only receive a capped amount of compensation for church abuse, and that they couldn’t be heard in court.

Victims previously had to agree to Pell’s Melbourne Response because the Church invoked the so-called “Ellis defence” when being sued by victims wanting compensation for abuse they suffered at the hands of organisations who spruiked pastoral care, or may have been involved in cover ups.

The Ellis defence stated the Catholic Church did not technically exist as a legal entity, therefore it could not be prosecuted.

The Church capped the maximum payments for victims at $50,000. This was later lifted to $75,000. According to The Age, it is estimated this saved the church up to $62 million dollars. A massive 93 per cent of the claims were to do with the misconduct of priests.

The average payment for those paid out by the Church was $46,000, whereas those who took the matters to court averaged a settlement of $270,000 in 2015.

Victims of child sex abuse in NSW can now sue the Church after the State Government removed the Church’s ability to invoke the Ellis defence on January 1.

The defence was so named after John Ellis, a former altar boy who lost a landmark civil action against the Catholic Church over child sex abuse after it successfully argued it had no “legal personality” and was not a proper defendant.

PELL TOUGH, INTIMIDATING AT SCHOOL

Speaking about Pell’s younger years, a former priest paints a picture of a rough and tough schoolyard jock who used his towering physique to intimidate others.

“He always had leadership ability. He was a strong personality, and he was a very rough footballer, very tough, very strong, and let nobody get in his way,” said Paul Collins, a Catholic historian and former priest who used to umpire Pell’s football matches.

He left Ballarat to study Catholicism and was ordained in Rome in 1966. He then gained a doctorate at Oxford before moving home to a sharehouse with another priest, Australia’s worst paedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale.

Ridsdale is serving a lengthy jail term after being convicted of sexually abusing and indecently assaulting 65 children — some as young as four.

Pell said at the time he didn’t find the case to be “of much interest to me”.

He quickly rose through the Catholic ranks and found himself in charge of all the Catholic schools in Ballarat.

By 1996 he was the Archbishop of Melbourne. He used his role to rail against homosexuality, abortion and the inclusion of women in senior roles in the Church.

As Pell was ordained the top Catholic in Sydney, he was accused of abusing a boy at a camp in Victoria in 1961.

The judge found merit in both the accusation and the denial, but ended up throwing out the complaint. Pell’s rise continued and he became a Cardinal in 2003. By 2014 he was the Vatican treasurer, embedded in the inner circle of the highest echelons of the Catholic Church. He is a close confidant of Pope Francis.

The Vatican has today confirmed that Pell is no longer its Secretariat for the Economy. Pell’s role was one of the most senior in the Catholic Church.

 

 

 

 

 




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