AUSTRALIA
Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC)
May 10, 2020
By Jessica Longbottom
Key points:
— Attempts to prosecute other senior Catholics for knowing about clergy abuse have failed
— Mandatory reporting laws didn’t come into effect in Victoria until 2014
— Victoria Police says it will examine the royal commission’s findings
— It found Cardinal Pell was aware of general allegations that children were being abused in the Ballarat diocese from 1973.
After a two-year wait, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses into Child Sexual Abuse has released its findings on what Cardinal George Pell knew about clergy abuse.
It also found that he was told that paedophile priest Gerard Ridsdale was being moved because of his alleged sexual abuse of children at a meeting in 1982.
The royal commission found that later on, as he rose through the ranks in the Archdiocese of Melbourne, Cardinal Pell should have advocated for the removal of paedophile priest Peter Searson when he received a list of allegations of bizarre behaviour by him in 1989.
The royal commission found that later on, as he rose through the ranks in the Archdiocese of Melbourne, Cardinal Pell should have advocated for the removal of paedophile priest Peter Searson when he received a list of allegations of bizarre behaviour by him in 1989.
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