AUSTRALIA
The Age
April 13, 2016
Bianca Hall
Legal Affairs Reporter for The Age
Lawyers for Cardinal George Pell have sought to discredit a witness at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse on Wednesday, persuading Justice Peter McClellan to publicly release a document they say calls into question the testimony of a man whose brother was allegedly abused by disgraced Ballarat Christian Brother Edward Dowlan.
Cardinal Pell’s lawyer Sam Duggan also claimed the man, known only as BWF, was an unreliable witness.
But Justice McClellan said he was only releasing the document – a judge’s courtroom remarks sentencing BWF for an unrelated crime years later – in the interests of openness and transparency.
BWF clashed with Mr Duggan at an earlier hearing of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in December, when he told the commission he had told church authorities in 1973 his younger brother BWG was brutally bashed and molested by disgraced brother Edward Dowlan.
BWF said he had discovered that his brother had been sent to a doctor because an attack from Dowlan had left his legs and buttocks severely bruised. He assumed at the time that he had also been sexually assaulted because Dowlan’s abusive behaviour was then common knowledge among students.
Dowlan is currently serving a minimum of three years in jail for abusing 20 young boys.
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