Australian Cardinal Pell's conduct holds Bitter Lesson for Sex Abuse Victims
- From: Julie <jjsttm@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2008 15:48:47 -0700 (PDT)
Cardinal's conduct holds bitter lesson for abuse victims
Editorial
theage.com.au (Australia)
July 9, 2008
CARDINAL George Pell, the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, is about to
play host to the Pope and an estimated 25,000 young Catholics from
around the world. It can be assumed that yet another scandal about
clerical sexual abuse is not the kind of advance publicity he would
have been hoping for. The controversy in which he is now embroiled,
however, appears to be of his own making — even if the accusations of
dishonesty that have been levelled against him are set aside. To many
critics, inside and outside the church, of the way the Catholic
hierarchy has dealt with the sexual-abuse crisis, the lesson will be
that Australia's most senior Catholic cleric has learned nothing.
In 1982, Anthony Jones, then 29 and working in religious education,
was assaulted by a Sydney Catholic priest, Terrance Goodall. Twenty
years later he lodged a formal complaint with the church, and the
matter was investigated by a former policeman, Howard Murray, who
recommended that the allegations in the complaint be sustained without
qualification. Mr Murray also investigated another complaint against
Goodall, by a man who was an 11-year-old altar boy at the time of the
assault. In 2005 Goodall was convicted of indecently assaulting Mr
Jones under a law dating from the time of the incident, when
homosexual acts were still illegal in NSW.
In a letter to Mr Jones, however, Cardinal Pell told him his
allegation was not being upheld by the church because no other
complaint had been received about Goodall. On the same day, he also
wrote to the other man who had complained about the priest. The
cardinal now says that his letter to Mr Jones was a mistake, because
he had believed that aggravated sexual assault was synonymous with
rape. The letter was "poorly put", he maintains, because he was
attempting to inform Mr Jones that there had been no other allegation
of rape.
In an ABC interview on Monday Mr Jones accused Cardinal Pell of
misrepresenting the truth. "He had to know that there were other
complaints because he wrote to the man who as an 11-year-old boy was
assaulted by Father Goodall on the same day. His signatures are on the
letters, so he had to know."
Whether or not Cardinal Pell's explanation of his response to Mr
Jones' complaint is disingenuous, however, it is undeniable that he
has at least grossly mishandled the matter. The cardinal did receive
Mr Murray's report on the complaints against Goodall, and shortly
after signed letters to two complainants on the same day. What would
be said about a senior officer of the Attorney-General's Department or
the Department of Human Services who, after responding to two victims
of sexual assault, later admitted that he had misunderstood the term
"aggravated sexual assault", and who appeared to have forgotten about
one of the victims when writing to the other? There would be a public
outcry, with demands for the officer's dismissal. Some of those making
such demands might even be prominent church leaders.
Cardinal Pell is not going to resign or be sacked as a result of his
handling of Mr Jones' complaint. But if Pope Benedict does apologise
to the victims of clerical sexual abuse during his visit to Sydney, as
many within the church have been urging him to do, the apology will
have a hollow ring — not because of any insincerity on the Pope's
part, but because the practice of senior clerics still does not
reflect sufficient understanding of, and compassion for, the plight of
victims.
Even if there was no deliberate misrepresentation of the truth on
Cardinal Pell's part, the implicit message in his letter to Mr Jones
and his subsequent defences of it is that sexual abuse by those who
have the pastoral care of others is a problem to be managed, in order
to minimise damage to the church though bad publicity. The bitter
irony, of course, is that such attitudes generate even worse
publicity, as has now happened in the case of Mr Jones.
And it is not the only bad publicity the church must contend with in
the lead-up to World Youth Day. Changes in the law in NSW will allow
police to arrest and fine anyone deemed to be causing "annoyance or
inconvenience" to those attending World Youth Day events. In effect,
this gives police broad powers to prevent even peaceful protests. It
is a shameful infringement of free speech, and Cardinal Pell ought to
have advised the NSW Government that the laws are unnecessary. In the
wake of the revelations about Cardinal Pell's handling of Mr Jones'
complaint, the likelihood is that there will now be more protests than
might otherwise have been the case.
.
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