AUSTRALIA
ABC – The World Today
ELEANOR HALL: Let’s go now to the latest from the child abuse Royal Commission, which today heard intriguing details about how the Sydney Archbishop George Pell handled the complaint of child sexual abuse by John Ellis.
John Ellis attempted to sue the Church a decade ago but, in what’s become known as the Ellis Defence, the court found that the Church could not be sued.
The Royal Commission has now been told that the Church’s lawyers may have not given the full facts of the case to George Pell and that this may have contributed to the long, vigorous and expensive legal action.
Our correspondent Emily Bourke has been monitoring the hearings in Sydney and she joins us now.
Emily, John Ellis was giving evidence again today. What did he say about how this litigation process affected him?
EMILY BOURKE: Well, John Ellis came forward to the Church in 2002 but the wheels of the Towards Healing process moved very slowly in this case and there had been scathing internal reviews about what actually occurred as this process unfolded.
In the end, there was no resolution from Towards Healing and so civil action commenced in earnest in 2004. But by 2007 all legal avenues had been exhausted. The claim was rejected and Mr Ellis was now about to be pursued for the hefty legal costs incurred by the Church.
He told the inquiry today that this set of circumstances had a deep psychological impact and he slipped into a severe depression.
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