AUSTRALIA
The Guardian (UK)
Australian Associated Press
theguardian.com, Monday 10 March 2014
The Catholic archdiocese of Sydney under then-archbishop George Pell showed no concern for the wellbeing of sex abuse victim John Ellis as church solicitors fought him in court, a hearing has been told.
The royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse is examining the experiences of abuse survivor John Ellis when he went through the church’s internal process Towards Healing and then civil litigation.
Ellis was sexually abused between 1974 and 1979 when he was aged between 13 and 17 by Aidan Duggan, who was a Catholic priest at Bass Hill in Sydney.
The case of Ellis, who failed in his attempts to sue Cardinal Pell and the trustees of the Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney, has entered legal history.
In 2005 it was found he could sue neither, and this has been interpreted by some as creating church immunity from prosecution over abuse.
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