AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites
By a Broken Rites researcher (article updated 8 June 2015)
Cardinal George Pell is claiming now that he has “helped” the Catholic Church’s sex-abuse victims. Therefore, let’s look at how Pell treated one of the church’s victims — a former altar boy, John Ellis. Cardinal Pell (as head of the Sydney Catholic archdiocese) instigated the archdiocese’s legal battle against John Ellis, according to evidence and documents presented to Australia’s child-abuse Royal Commission. Pell’s legal victory in 2007 (known as the “Ellis defence”) now forces church-victims to accept a discounted in-house “Towards Healing” settlement instead of suing for proper compensation, the Commission was told. And this Broken Rites article demonstrates that John Ellis was not the only victim of his abuser, Sydney priest Father Aidan Duggan.
John Ellis was thrice abused
According to statements and documents given to at the Royal Commission, the Sydney archdiocese victimised John Ellis three times:
The first abuse: In 1974 the Sydney archdiocese recruited Father Aidan Duggan (from a religious order in Britain) and appointed him to a Sydney parish (Bass Hill), where it gave him easy access to a 13-year-old altar boy, John Ellis. Duggan, who had been a serial child-abuser in Britain, immediately began using his priestly authority to sexually abuse John Ellis, and this happened on church premises. As often happens in church-abuse cases, the church culture intimidated John Ellis into remaining silent about the abuse. This secrecy disrupted John Ellis’s adolescent development and his later life.
The second abuse: In 2002, when he was aged 41, John Ellis told the Sydney archdiocese about how his life had been damaged. He sought an acknowledgement about this church-abuse, plus some support in addressing the damage. But (according to evidence at the Royal Commission in 2014) Archbishop George Pell behaved evasively, traumatising John Ellis further. Pell finally accepted that John Ellis was a victim of church sexual abuse but refused him compensation, offerng him only a discounted “pastoral” settlement (commonly known as a “Towards Healing” settlement). The draft settlement document stated that this settlement was being offered by:
1. George Pell (as the head of the Sydney archdiocese) and
2. the trustees of the archdiocese.
This document would require Mr Ellis to give up his right to sue the archdiocese for proper compensation. Mr Ellis refused to sign away this right.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.