AUSTRALIA
The Australian
Church would not believe victims of abuse unless priest admitted it royal commission told
JANET FIFE-YEOMANS THE DAILY TELEGRAPH MARCH 13, 2014
A CATHOLIC Church official would not believe a man had been sexually abused for years by a priest – unless the priest admitted it, the royal commission into child sex abuse heard yesterday.
As part of the church’s bungled handling of the claim by former altar boy John Ellis, the then-Archbishop of Sydney George Pell was told it was Mr Ellis’s word against that of the priest, but the priest had never been questioned.
Father Aidan Duggan, who began his abuse of Mr Ellis at the Christ the King Catholic Church at Sydney’s Bass Hill, had been diagnosed with senile dementia and was in a Randwick nursing home.
John Davoren, who set up the church’s professional standards office in NSW, admitted drafting a letter for Archbishop Pell – now a Cardinal – to be sent to Mr Ellis which said: “I very much regret any hurt that you have experienced but under these circumstances I do not see that there is anything the Archdiocese can do.
“As you are aware, this is not to suggest that you are disbelieved but that it has become a matter of one person’s word against another.”
Mr Davoren agreed with counsel assisting the commission, Gail Furness SC, that Father Duggan had never been spoken to and there was no “other”.
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