AUSTRALIA/GENEVA
SBS
Source: AAP
11 NOV 2014
A UN committee has asked the Australian government to explain its response when Cardinal George Pell backed a Vatican refusal to hand over documents to the child abuse royal commission.
The committee meeting in Geneva this week is considering Australia’s fourth report on human rights and the country’s implementation of the Convention against Torture.
It has received several submissions from non-government organisations in Australia including two from networks representing survivors of institutional and clerical child abuse.
Geneva members of the Committee Against Torture raised the issue of Cardinal Pell’s defence of a Vatican decision not to hand over all documents relating to child sex abuse by clerics in Australia.
At a public hearing of The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in August, Cardinal Pell told commission chair Peter McClellan his request for all papal documents relating to every abuse case involving an Australian cleric was “unreasonable”.
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