AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

March 12, 2014

Catherine Armitage
Senior Writer

Cardinal George Pell had an “unusual” and close early involvement in handling the complaint by a former altar boy which eventually led to a court decision insulating the Catholic church in Australia against liability in cases of sexual abuse by priests, the child sex abuse Royal Commission has heard.

John Ellis was 13 years old in 1974 when Father Aidan Duggan of Bass Hill parish seduced him into a sexual relationship which continued for 13 years. By the time Mr Ellis recognised the relationship was abusive it was the mid 1990s and he was a husband and father.

As Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal Pell was informed of Ellis’s complaint within a month of it being made in 2002. Documents tendered to the Commission reveal that from then on the Cardinal actively participated in a bumbling and insensitive…