AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald
Sept. 7, 2013
Catherine Armitage
Senior Writer
The Catholic Church is pursuing hard-line legal tactics against victims of sex abuse in civil claims despite publicly promising to put victims’ needs first, lawyers say.
The church has promised to ”promote lasting healing” by avoiding litigation and ”putting the needs of victims first” since a national royal commission and two state inquiries into child sex abuse began.
Yet its legal representatives persist with obstructive and combative actions inconsistent with its public statements, says John Ellis, a solicitor with Clinch Long Letherbarrow whose unsuccessful case against the church set a legal precedent and famously led to an apology by Cardinal George Pell for ”legal abuse”.
Mr Ellis said it was difficult to provide specific examples because of client confidentiality, but victims continued to be threatened with court if they didn’t accept settlements.
He said the so-called Ellis defence kept surfacing in negotiations, despite Catholic Church Insurances telling the Victorian parliamentary inquiry it was not used in civil cases.
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