“Enormous mistakes” in dealing with abuse cases

adminonNovember 29, 2021January 5, 2022Leave a Comment

Cardinal Pell testifies via video conference © Jeremy Piper (CBA)

Protests outside hotel accompany Cardinal Pell's statement © Dan Himbrechts

Australian Curia Cardinal George Pell has acknowledged "enormous errors" in the handling of abuse cases. He told the Australian Abuse Commission on Monday night that he would "not defend the indefensible".

Church in Australia "messed things up and let people down," Pell says, according to Australian media reports. The cardinal made his comments via video link from Rome to the state commission investigating the handling of abuse cases by institutions in Sydney. Because of an acute heart condition he could not fly to the hearing in Sydney on the advice of his doctors.

Admitting one's own mistakes

The cardinal had also admitted his own mistakes in a sweeping way, it was said. "I must say I was very inclined to believe a priest at the time when he denied the accusation of abuse," Pell was quoted as saying.

When asked about specific cases, however, the Vatican finance minister had said he could not remember or had blamed the then bishop Ronald Mulkearns. In light of evidence presented by the commission, Pell had acknowledged there had been "apparently a significant number of people" who had known about the abuse.

Abuse cases in the Australian diocese of Ballarat

The hearing focused on abuse cases in the Australian diocese of Ballarat. Pell was a priest there between 1973 and 1984, episcopal vicar for education and one of Bishop Mulkearns' advisors. A number of priests in the diocese have now been convicted and sentenced for sexual abuse in many cases.

Pell knew these priests and was friends with one perpetrator, Gerald Ridsdale. The former chaplain of the boys' school St. Alipius was convicted and sentenced in multiple trials of sexual abuse totaling 138 counts between 1993 and 2013. Victims were 53 children. Pell lived for a time with Ridsdale in the school's priestly flat-sharing community.

Hearing to continue

Pell accused of involvement in abuse cover-up. He is alleged to have offered a victim, David Ridsdale, hush money after the abuse by his uncle Gerald. Pell firmly rejects these accusations. The cardinal's hearing will continue Tuesday.

Abuse victims pursued hearing

During the questioning in a Roman hotel, ten abuse victims or parents of victims also sat in the room. Some wore T-shirts with the words "No more Silence" or a child's picture of themselves on them. In a statement, they demanded more financial support from the church for those who have suffered. Their traumas, he said, had left many unable to make a living or addicted to alcohol. While the church secures pensions for perpetrators, it leaves their victims in the lurch materially.

The Australian Abuse Commission was established in 2013 by then-Prime Minister Julia Gillard to investigate the handling of abuse cases by churches, religious communities and secular institutions. The final report is expected in December 2017.

In the case of Australian Cardinal George Pell, convicted of abuse, his defense attorney moves into the headlines. He had downplayed sexual assault of minors as "flower sex". Now comes his apology.

The defense attorney for Australian Cardinal George Pell, who was convicted of abuse, Robert Richter, has publicly apologized for downplaying sexual assaults on minors as "flower sex".

"Totally inappropriate choice of words"

"In an effort to obtain a lenient sentence, I used a completely inappropriate choice of words, for which I deeply apologize to all who interpreted it in a way it was never meant," a statement from Judge on Thursday reads.

At the post-conviction hearing to determine the appropriate sentence based on the verdict, counsel had argued that these crimes were nothing more than a mere case of "plain vanilla sex". In court, the lawyer had also stressed that his client deserved only a light sentence, aming that the sexual assaults had lasted "less than six minutes" and that there had been no ejaculation.

Still convinced of Pell's innocence

Even if the attorney remains convinced of his client's innocence, at the hearing on what prison sentence is appropriate, he must first proceed on the basis of the court's finding of guilt and attempt to obtain the most lenient sentence possible for the judicially recognized offense.

He never meant to "trivialize" the suffering and injuries of abuse victims, judge writes further. Rather, the "seriousness of the crime" had been acknowledged from the beginning by the "admission" that a "prison sentence was warranted" for it.

The 77-year-old Pell had been convicted of abuse. The Melbourne court considered it proven that in the mid-1990s he had committed sexual abuse against two boys who were 13 years old at the time of the crime.

Appeal filed

Sentencing to be announced by mid-March. Pell was transferred to a Melbourne prison on Wednesday. Attorney Richter has appealed the verdict.

The cardinal's conviction based on the testimony of a single victim has caused controversy in Australia. Some commentators criticized the guilty verdict as a blatant miscarriage of justice and claimed Pell's innocence. In a similar way to the defense counsel before the guilty verdict, they tried to explain why there could not have been any assaults at all.

Louise Milligan, author of the book "Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of George Pell," on the other hand, defended the credibility of the publicly unidentified plaintiff. Milligan had interviewed the man for her book, making her one of the few people to know his identity. "He has nothing to gain from this [the lawsuit], but everything to lose," she told the TV political magazine "7.30".

In early 2018, Pell's defenders had been given access to the extensive interviews and video footage Milligan recorded while researching her book. The book was published before Pell was indicted and was withdrawn from circulation after the indictment was handed down.

Catholic Bishop Peter Kohlgraf of Mainz has called on the church not to close its mind to new scientific findings. "If faith wants to be reasonable, it must not avoid the conversation with the sciences today," he said.

"When in the past months, weeks and days we in the Bishops' Conference have thought about topics such as 'priestly way of life', 'power and restriction of power' as well as 'sexual morality', some have also felt that we cannot avoid the results of modern science when we are looking for answers," Kohlgraf said on Sunday at a church service in Mainz.

Faith does not mean "having a dead body of belief that sits in a vault untouched by new knowledge and is passed down from generation to generation.". Otherwise, faith "belonged in the museum". A faith without movement is ideology. Kohlgraf commemorated at the service his predecessor, Cardinal Karl Lehmann, who died about a year ago on 11. March 2018 had died. Lehmann stands for a cosmopolitan and philanthropic theology that does not close its mind to new insights, she said.

Church in "deep night"

Faith can also contain "stretches of fear". At the moment, the church is experiencing "a great uncanny fear, a deep night," Kohlgraf stressed, referring to the abuse scandal. "We in the church have made talking about a loving God so implausible by our behavior." Perhaps that is why the church must "endure a time of apparent remoteness from God". At the moment, the church is not spared "to tremble anew before God, his claim, his presence in the darkness".

"God is not harmless," Kohlgraf stressed. "He is love, but not 'dear' in our colloquial sense."That is why it is not harmless to speak of God. But if talking about God serves to secure one's own power, this is "one of the worst and most dangerous forms of atheism". God then becomes an instrument.

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