AUSTRALIA
ABC News
[with audio]
Updated Thu Oct 11, 2012 9:27am AEDT
A Melbourne lawyer’s submission to the Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry into the Handling of Child Abuse alleges that in the 1960s George Pell was in the room when a young boy told another priest he had been raped. The Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney says Cardinal Pell has stated several times he will appear at the inquiry if he is asked to do so.
Samantha Donovan
Transcript
TONY EASTLEY: It’s possible that Australia’s most senior Catholic, Cardinal George Pell, will be called to give evidence at the Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry into the Handling of Child Abuse.
In her submission Melbourne lawyer Viv Waller has told the inquiry that in the 1960s George Pell heard a young boy tell another priest he’d been raped by a Christian Brother.
Dr Waller is speaking here with AM’s Samantha Donovan.
VIV WALLER: I’ve been working in this field for a very long time and I’m quite familiar with the fact that a lot of victims of sexual abuse have had difficulty having their complaints dealt with appropriately.
And I’m instructed by one of my clients that in 1969 he went to the local presbytery at Ballarat East attached to a church called St Alipius and he asked to speak to George Pell. And George Pell was there and refused to see him but was present in the room when he was speaking to another priest and he reported that he had been raped by Robert Charles Best who was a Christian Brother working at that school.
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