AUSTRALIA
ABC – RN Breakfast
Monday 22 February 2016 Gregg Borschmann
Ballarat sexual abuse survivor Tony Wardley had previously chosen to remain anonymous. Now, thanks to the efforts of a crowd-funded campaign, he’s off to Rome to see Cardinal George Pell give evidence in person. Gregg Borschmann reports.
Tony Wardley can’t quite believe it.
He’s packing his bags for Rome, one of a group of 15 victim/survivors of child sexual abuse from Ballarat.
More than $203,000 has been raised in the past week to send the group to Rome to hear Cardinal George Pell give evidence to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.
Commissioner Justice Peter McClellan said today that the desire of the group to attend the hearings in Rome was a ‘reasonable request’. The venue is likely to be a hotel room, which will be tested later today for the quality of the video link it can provide.
‘That’s unreal. I wasn’t expecting it. You can’t see my face, but I’m smiling,’ Wardley, who was abused from the age of six at three different schools in Ballarat in the late 1960s and early 1970s, told RN Breakfast.
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