AUSTRALIA
The Age
December 15, 2015
Judy Courtin
The Catholic Church continues to harm sex abuse victims by its failure to acknowledge the extent to which it covered-up sex crimes against children.
For three weeks, the County Court of Victoria has been host to countless victim survivors of Catholic clergy child-sex crimes. The severe psychological and psychiatric harm caused by these crimes was evident not only with the primary victims giving evidence, but also the many family members of loved ones who had killed themselves because the pain and damage of the sex crimes were too great to bear.
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse fastidiously scheduled four weeks of hearings into the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne and the Diocese of Ballarat. These were to be concluded this week by three days of evidence and cross-examination of Cardinal George Pell. But such an apotheosis was abruptly truncated on Friday as Cardinal Pell belatedly made an application to the court to have his evidence heard from Rome via videolink, rather than attend in person in Melbourne, as previously contracted. Pell’s blood pressure, it seemed, was elevated. He was well enough to give evidence, but not to travel.
As well as refusing the application, Justice Peter McClellan categorically quashed any perceived or real conflict of interest by declining to accept Pell’s invitation that his senior counsel, Allan Myers QC, be granted a private and confidential audience to determine Pell’s application to not travel to Australia. It is the imperious quality of this request that highlights Pell’s hard-wired sense of entitlement – that same sense of entitlement that has underpinned decades of rebuff and cruel dismissal of victims and their families by Pell and his henchmen.
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