Melissa Davey - The Case of George Pell: Reckoning with Child Sexual Abuse by Clergy

THE CASE OF GEORGE PELL

Melissa Davey has been Guardian Australia s Melbourne bureau chief for several years. She has been nominated for three Walkley Awards and two Quill Awards, and has won two New York Festival awards for The Reckoning, a podcast series she collaborated on with David Marr and Miles Martignoni. She has also won awards from medical bodies for her work reporting on rheumatic heart disease in Aboriginal children, and for her investigation into the brutality of gynaecologist Emil Shawky Gayed. The latter triggered a government inquiry and saw her win a Walkley in 2019.

Melissa frequently appears on BBC World News, and on commercial radio in Australia and overseas.

melissaldavey.com

@MelissaLDavey

Scribe Publications
1820 Edward St, Brunswick, Victoria 3056, Australia
2 John St, Clerkenwell, London, WC1N 2ES, United Kingdom
3754 Pleasant Ave, Suite 100, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55409, USA

Published by Scribe 2020

Copyright Melissa Davey 2020

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publishers of this book.

9781925849684 (Australian edition)
9781912854707 (UK edition)
9781925938159 (ebook)

Catalogue records for this book are available from the National Library of Australia and the British Library

scribepublications.com.au
scribepublications.co.uk
scribepublications.com

I dedicate this book to all those who were ignored,
disbelieved, or threatened by people with the power to do
something, but who instead chose to be complicit.

Contents

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

Appendix A:

Appendix B:

CHAPTER ONE

Committal

Accountability of the hierarchy means criminal accountability for the crime of concealment. We dont have one criminal conviction in Australia against members of the hierarchy of the Catholic Church who have taken part in concealing abuse that occurred. And those who are overseas enjoy impunity.

Dr Judy Courtin, lawyer

It was the middle of the night in Rome on 29 June 2017, six months before Australias Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse was due to deliver its final report, when detectives from Victoria Polices Taskforce SANO served a summons on Cardinal George Pells legal representatives in Melbourne. He was charged with historical child sexual abuse offences, and was ordered to appear in court in Melbourne on 26 July that same year. Victoria Polices deputy commissioner, Shane Patton, only said that there were multiple complainants. It was not clear what had been alleged, what the specific charges were, or how many charges there were.

There had been talk of the police investigation and potential charges for months, ever since Melbourne-based reporter Lucie Morris-Marr broke the story for News Corp of a police probe into allegations against Pell. In July 2016, I had also spoken to a man, Les Tyack, who told me he saw Pell very clearly exposing himself to three young boys at Torquay Life Saving Club in the summer of 1986 or 1987. I asked Tyack if he had told any of his friends about the incident at the time. He named two friends and gave me their phone numbers. I called those people immediately after getting off the phone to Tyack, before he could warn them that I might ring, and both men verified his story.

Tyack told me that when he walked into the change rooms, Pell was there, and he was facing three young boys while towelling his back.

Then I went to have a shower and he was still standing there when I got out, this time with the towel draped over his shoulder and full-frontal facing the boys, Tyack said.

Tyack said the boys appeared to be about eight to 10 years old, and were about two to three metres in front of Pell on the bench along the opposite wall to the entrance.

Tyack said the boys were dressed by the time he got out of the shower, and he told them to gather their belongings and leave the room. He said he then spoke to Pell.

I said, I know what youre up to. Get dressed and piss off, and dont come back to the surf club. If I see you here again, Ill call the police.

He said he never saw Pell again.

Id seen him in the surf club two or three weeks prior to the incident, and I didnt know who he was. I was talking to a couple of surf club members and I said, Whos that guy?, and they said, That s George Pell, expecting me to know who he was and that he was a bishop. Thats why I didnt tell the police at the time, because I thought whos going to believe me over a bishop of th e Church? But it was something I did mention to mates early in t he pie ce.

At the same time, two former St Alipius students alleged to journalist Louise Milligan on the ABCs 7.30 Report that Pell had repeatedly touched their genitals while swimming with them at the Eureka pool in Ballarat in 197879. Pell was episcopal vicar for education in the Ballarat diocese at the time.

In October 2016, news broke that Pell had been interviewed in Rome by police about allegations against him. So in mid-2017, while the news of charges being laid was not surprising, it was still sensational. At the time, Pell was the treasurer of the Vatican and the Holy See, a position that placed him as one of the top men in charge after the Pope. He was once believed to be in the running to replace Pope Francis. Once charges were laid against him, Pell became the highest-ranking Catholic official in the world to be facing trial over historical sexual-offence allegations. There had been rumours, until then, that charges might be laid at any moment, or that perhaps the case would be dropped at any moment, on the grounds that the offences were too historical and the evidence too weak. The media had been playing a waiting game.

At a televised press conference held in the hours after the news of the charges being laid broke, Pell vehemently denied what he was being accused of.

There has been relentless character assassination for months, he said, adding that he was looking forward finally to having my day in court. I am innocent of these charges, they are false.

The whole idea of sexual abuse is abhorrent to me, he continued. Ive kept Pope Francis, the Holy Father, regularly informed during these long months and have spoken to him on a number of occasions in the last week, most recently a day or so ago.

All along I have been completely consistent and clear in my total rejection of these allegations. News of these charges strengthens my resolve, and court proceedings now offer an opportunity to clear my name and return back to work.

A statement from the Vatican said that the Holy See respected the Australian justice system, but added:

At the same time, it is important to recall that Cardinal Pell has openly and repeatedly condemned as immoral and intolerable the acts of abuse committed against minors; has cooperated in the past with Australian authorities (for example, in his depositions before the royal commission); has supported the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors; and finally, as a diocesan bishop in Australia, has introduced systems and procedures both for the protection of minors and to provide assistance to victims of abuse.

On 5 March 2018, day one of the committal hearing of Pell, I had no inkling that this case was about to consume the next couple of years, at least, of my life. I was a mid-level reporter, one face in a media pack that included reporters from around the globe who had descended on the Magistrates Court on William Street in Melbourne. They were all vying for a seat in the committal hearing and hoping to learn more about what the cardinal was being accused of having done. Meanwhile, governments around the world were holding inquiries into institutional child sexual abuse.