AUSTRALIA
Daily Mail
By Brianne Tolj For Daily Mail Australia and Australian Associated Press
An ABC journalist claims Cardinal George Pell’s lawyers urged her to delete any correspondence between them after she asked for an interview.
Louise Milligan said she tried to contact the cardinal and his lawyers repeatedly while working on her book ‘Cardinal: The rise and fall of George Pell,’ which looks at the allegations of child sexual abuse surrounding him.
‘I made several attempts to try and engage with him, through his office and his lawyers and he declined to take up that invitation except on the most onerous grounds, which included giving him the entire manuscript of the book. I’ve never heard that happen in two decades of journalism,’ the 7.30 reporter told 9News.
‘When we refused to do that his lawyers asked us to destroy the correspondence and if we didn’t destroy the correspondence they wanted us to give it back to them.’
Cardinal Pell has since slammed Milligan’s recently published book as a ‘character assassination.’
He has strongly denied the allegations.
‘Each and every allegation of abuse and cover up against him is false. The book is an exercise in character assassination,’ a statement from Cardinal Pell’s office issued on Monday night reads.
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