AUSTRALIA
Independent Australia
Tess Lawrence 18 February 2016,
Lawyers for Catholic Church sex abuse victims are applying to the Royal Commission for leave for their clients to appear with Cardinal Pell in Rome. Contributing editor-at-large Tess Lawrence reports.
NEWS FLASH!
IN A SENSATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, lawyers representing Catholic Church sex abuse victims are applying to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, seeking leave to appear with Cardinal Pell in Rome.
Independent Australia has learned that Ballarat based Ingrid Irwin, of Irwin & Irwin Law, instructing solicitor for victims Andrew Collins and Stephen Woods and barrister Jim Shaw, of Gordon & Jackson, William Crocket Chambers are two lawyers seeking leave to appear.
Others lawyers are also expected to seek leave.
If leave is granted, it would go some way to mitigate what is publicly perceived to be a judicial and psychological imbalance of power, and unfair concession granted to the domineering Cardinal Pell.
On ill-health grounds Pell controversially sought and was granted the right to give testimony from Rome by video link, and thus has avoided returning to Australia and confronting victims in person in the Royal Commission’s Ballarat sittings.
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