AUSTRALIA
The Australian
DAN BOX THE AUSTRALIAN MARCH 15, 2014
CHRISSIE and Anthony Foster have sat neatly in the front row of the public gallery throughout each day of this week’s royal commission hearing in Sydney.
The Melbourne couple have travelled at their own expense. Two of their three daughters were raped by a Catholic priest. For them, the hearing represents a chance to see, behind closed doors, into the inner workings of the church.
Asked what, particularly, they are here to see, Mrs Foster replies: “George Pell, of course.” So, too, is everybody else. The first half of this two-week hearing has been dominated by the man who has, to date, not entered the commission room. The former Catholic archbishop of Sydney, recently appointed to a senior Vatican role, is unlikely to appear before he gives evidence in person at the end of next week.
Even in his absence, the evidence before the commission is drawing a close outline of the man and his actions throughout a long and bitterly sad chapter in the history of his church.
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse is at present investigating the church’s handling of a complaint brought by a former altar boy, John Ellis, who was sexually abused by a Sydney priest.
Ellis first formally approached the church in June 2002, saying he had been abused by Father Aidan Duggan over several years from 1974 while at the Bass Hill parish in Sydney’s west. His case, the commission hears, was badly handled under the church’s internal Towards Healing process for dealing with such claims.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.