AUSTRALIA
Daily Telegraph
Monsignor Brian Rayner reveals he ‘welled up’ when he took John Ellis to meet abuser Father Aidan Duggan in a nursing home
JANET FIFE-YEOMANS THE DAILY TELEGRAPH MARCH 17, 2014
CARDINAL George Pell’s former right hand man has disputed evidence given to the royal commission into child sex abuse.
Cardinal Pell has told the commission in a statement that the reason the church fought legal action against a victim of child sex abuse was because he had been told the victim wanted millions – not just $100,000.
However Monsignor Brian Rayner, the former chancellor of the Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney, said today that he would have told the Cardinal, then an archbishop, that the victim, John Ellis, had suggested to settle for $100,000 through the church’s controversial Towards Healing protocol.
“I had regular meetings with the archbishop and I would have kept him informed,” Monsignor Rayner said.
The archdiocese ended up spending around $1.5 million in legal costs but it won the case with a ruling that the church was not a legal entity and could not be sued, blocking any other similar claims against it around the country in what has become known as the Ellis decision.
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