Was George Pell left in the dark or were we?

By Louise Milligan.

Survivors gasped as they heard Cardinal George Pell’s evidence at the Royal Commission and his central thesis that an astonishing list of people had deceived him about what was happening within the Church, writes Louise Milligan.

The Victorian parish of Doveton where Julie Stewart grew up is 19 kilometres as the crow flies from the suburban Melbourne Catholic parish where my family lived, prayed and were educated.

Julie and I both grew up in the 1980s and were both given confession by paedophile priests.

Fortunately for me, mine was a one-off confession and the priest was into boys. In a crushing stroke of bad luck for Julie, Father Peter Searson was not so fussy.

Julie and I were in Sydney last week to hear the video link evidence of Catholic Cardinal George Pell to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Abuse.

Julie gave evidence last November and it was chilling. Two years of grooming and abuse in the confessional culminated in nine-year-old Julie running, screaming, from the box to her principal of Holy Family school, Graeme Sleeman.

Sleeman lost his career trying to expose Searson's abuse of children - as well as his other bizarre and cruel behaviour and his harassment of parents and staff - to the Church hierarchy.

George Pell now says he feels terribly for him. But Sleeman told me that when, in the 1990s, after applying for 15 jobs in schools after leaving Doveton, he asked George Pell to publicly support him, he was rebuffed.

"He hung up. No more communication," Sleeman says.

Julie Stewart is a testament to survival, but the memory of her abuse is always "there", she says, pointing to her temple, "and here", she says, through tears, pointing to her heart.

Fr Peter Searson was an awful man. He carried a gun, he ridiculed children about their weight, he held a knife to a girl's chest, and he tortured animals. He was vain and cruel and permanently bryl-creamed. In his evidence this week, George Pell described Searson as deeply unpleasant.

That's pretty much where Julie Stewart and George Pell part company. Julie, like the other survivors in the Royal Commission hearing room in Sydney last week (and the others texting me from Rome), gasped when she heard the Cardinal's evidence and his central thesis that an astonishing list of people had deceived him.

The only one left standing

As the lawyers might say, those in on the supposed deception of Pell include but are not necessarily limited to: Former Archbishop Frank Little; Ballarat Bishop Ronald Mulkearns and at least two of his priestly consultors; at least some of the Curia of bishops; management in the Catholic Education Office; and a delegation from the Doveton school who went to Pell specifically to warn him about Searson.

The Cardinal threw his colleagues under the bus, blaming everyone but himself. Of all the members of the Catholic hierarchy who had any knowledge, he's the only man, according to him, left standing.

"I was a new boy on the block. I was known to be capable of being outspoken," the Cardinal ventured in relation to the Catholic Education Office's particular deception.

"They might have been fearful of just what line I would take when confronted with all the information."

So, according to the evidence of the Cardinal - in concert with the exhibits tendered to the Commission - these people held back vital information. They shielded the "new boy on the block" from part of the story.

But this raises questions. A delegation of Doveton school staff representing parents went to Pell in 1989 when he was auxiliary bishop responsible for the area. The delegation had come to warn him about Searson, about issues, according to their written agenda for the meeting, like harassing parents and children, forcing kids into mandatory confessions and hanging around the children's toilets.

Is it plausible that they would put this information in writing, only to hold back on the unvarnished truth of the sexual abuse, as Pell implies, when they met with him?

"That group of people that went there were extremely angry and upset," Sleeman says. "And they would have been extremely forceful in saying this guy's handling of children is not on."

At the time the Doveton community allegedly held back vital information from Pell, they had written dozens of letters to the then archbishop, Frank Little, warning about Searson. (Some of the letters outlining abuse were written by children.)

Cardinal Pell says the Catholic Education Office engaged in obfuscation with him, but at the same time, they had asked the Vicar-General and the Archbishop to remove Searson from the school. How do we credibly reconcile these facts?

This alleged conspiracy raised high incredulity from the Royal Commission chair, Justice Peter McClelland, and the counsel assisting, Gail Furness.

"It is an extraordinary position, Cardinal," Gail Furness said.

"Counsel, this was an extraordinary world," the Cardinal replied. "A world of crimes and cover-ups. And people did not want the status quo to be disturbed."

Baffling answers

There were other baffling moments during Pell's testimony. For instance, the way he answered questions about the Ballarat consultor meetings he attended as a priest in 1977, 1979 and 1982. It was during these meetings that priests advised the Bishop, Ronald Mulkearns, on the removal and re-appointment of priests to parishes.

The minutes from these meetings show that there was discussion of Gerald Ridsdale.

Ridsdale became the nation's most prolific paedophile priest; there have been 76 complaints, 54 convictions, and victims are now estimated to be in the hundreds.

Mulkearns moved Ridsdale from parish to parish for years. He decimated the small far western town of Mortlake, abusing every kid he could get his hands on.

Before he was moved after the third consultor meeting in 1982, Ridsdale had had a 14-year-old boy living with him on a camp bed in the presbytery. That kid was Paul Levey, abused nightly for two years. He said from Rome this week that the whole town knew he was there, and that Pell too must have known.

But Cardinal Pell says otherwise. On Tuesday last week, Pell couldn't explain why Monsignor Leo Fiscalini and Fr Henry Nolan (Pell's first cousin) hadn't told him what they knew in the consultor meeting with Mulkearns, Pell and others when they discussed the need to move Ridsdale yet again. He did concede that Ridsdale had been moved an unusual number of times, though.

The Cardinal can't remember anything about those meetings, but he is certain they didn't discuss paedophilia. He noticed that one of the other consultors mentioned homosexuality. Maybe that was the reason Ridsdale was moved, he pondered. But when asked whether he remembered that, the Cardinal said he did not.

Another consultor, Father Melican, had earlier conceded to the Royal Commission that Ridsdale had been moved "to keep him away from children".

"And that was known to consultors at the time?" asked counsel assisting, Gail Furness.

"Yes," Fr Melican replied.

But George Pell says he knew nothing.

"I suggest, Cardinal, that it is implausible, given the knowledge of three of those consultors, given the conduct of Ridsdale and the wording of those minutes, that the consultors including you did not know why it had become necessary for him to be moved," Ms Furness put to the Cardinal.

"That is a complete non-sequitur," the Cardinal replied. "We can conclude about those who had that knowledge, we cannot conclude about the mind of those who were not privy to that knowledge."

The Counsel assisting became increasingly fired up: "Is it the case, Cardinal, that all of your answers over the last little while have been designed to exclude yourself in your mind from any responsibility in relation to Ridsdale and the diocese of Ballarat?"

"My answers were designed to answer your questions accurately and completely," said Cardinal Pell.

Donna Cushing went on a week away with Ridsdale when she was 12 with her three brothers: twin nine-year-olds and a boy of eleven, Sean. Ridsdale made creepy advances on Donna, but when she spent the day crying, he spared her that night and instead spent the remaining nights enforcing a roster of abuse with her brothers.

Sean died by suicide when he was a young man. One of the twins, Mark, went to Rome last week. He has never spoken publicly before, but told me last week he believed the "noose is getting tighter and tighter for Pell". Pell met with the consultors three years before that week away with Ridsdale. Those kids didn't have to have their childhoods taken away.

The Cardinal says he was deceived about Ridsdale. But Donna Cushing told me, "I can't believe that George Pell did not know about why Gerald Ridsdale was he was being moved."

"Everybody else knew - the police knew, parents knew, schools knew, the Catholic community knew," she said. "I cannot understand how he couldn't have picked up on that, put two and two together. He is a smart man; he has done lots of study."

Part of the Cardinal's argument was that these were different times and the culture of the day was for children not to be believed if they made a complaint about a priest.

He was cross-examined about that, with one survivor's barrister asking him if he could point to a "single untrue allegation made by a child in the Ballarat Diocese - one?"

The Cardinal could not.

Small concessions

The Cardinal made some small concessions for the first time: that he had heard rumours from priests and children about a Christian Brother in Ballarat, Edward Dowlan.

He also accepted that Tim Green was "not lying" when the latter had told the Royal Commission that Pell had told him "don't be ridiculous" when as an adolescent he had told Pell that he had been abused.

That did not mean, Pell added, that what Green had said was true. Green had a look on his face as the Cardinal gave this evidence that said, "I'm not giving anyone the satisfaction of knowing what I think about this."

The Cardinal also admitted he had been told of allegations of Edward Dowlan's abuse by a "good and honest lad". But when cross-examined about what he did with that information, Cardinal Pell conceded that he didn't act. With the experience of "forty years later", he added, he "should have done more". But he then added that "the boy wasn't asking me to do anything".

On the cluster of five paedophile priests and brothers living at the St Alipius parish in the 1970s and 80s - at times when Pell too lived there as Assistant Priest - the Cardinal said it was a "tragic coincidence".

"Tragic coincidence, my foot!" countered survivor Stephen Woods in Rome.

At the time, Pell was the Ballarat Diocese's Episcopal Vicar for Education - which he described, in a letter to the then-Bishop, as the "essential link between Bishop, Priest, parents, teachers and students". When asked about this letter, the Cardinal downplayed the significance of the role. He says that in that role he had heard no complaints of touching or overly affectionate behaviour by the teachers in the schools who also happened to be brothers.

"I can't remember any such examples but my memory might be playing me false," Cardinal Pell said.

"Why might your memory be playing you false?" asked Counsel Assisting.

"Because I don't have perfect recall," the Cardinal replied.

The answers frequently drew exasperation from the Chair of the Royal Commission, Justice Peter McClelland; for instance, when Pell insisted that he never gossiped with the other Ballarat consultors in between their meetings.

"I'd like to remind Your Honour of course we are talking about a different age - there was no social media, I don't think there were mobile telephones, we are talking about a country diocese," George Pell said.

"But there were telephones in the diocese, weren't there?" the Chair replied.

Cardinal: "Of course."

Chair: "And priests spoke to each other by telephone, I assume."

Cardinal: "Of course."

'Failed in the Church's name'

Francis Sullivan, who runs the Church's Truth and Justice Commission, and, from what I observe, a plain-speaking and compassionate fellow, sat through the third day of Pell's evidence, his jaw clenched so tight I worried for his dentistry.

I feel awfully sad for the committed Catholics, like my Dad, who cannot bear to think of this history and the niggling pieces of the Pell puzzle that don't quite fit. The Catholics who come from a religion with an impressive intellectual tradition and an innate sense of charity. Who feel moved by good priests' homilies and buoyed by their inspirational and charismatic Pope Francis.

I can see why it is easier to think that the Cardinal is the subject of a witch-hunt, and that the coarseness of some words of Tim Minchin in his widely-shared song Come Home (Cardinal Pell) somehow negate the questions outlined above.

As for Julie Stewart, Pell told a Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry in 2013, "There had been no convictions of a sexual nature against Searson. There might be victims." Julie had watched on TV. Might? She'd received a signed letter from archbishop Pell under the Melbourne Response in 1998 apologising for her abuse by Searson. She was paid $25,000.

Learning about the letter, Pell's interlocutor in that inquiry, Victorian MP Frank McGuire, another Catholic boy from a hard-scrabble area, wonders whether Pell misled the inquiry, "or downplayed his knowledge". When asked about this last week, the Cardinal apologised if he "inadvertently added to Ms Stewart's distress". But then he added a qualifier: "What I do say is that what I said was accurate."

After listening to the Cardinal all week, the usually plucky Julie looked ashen-faced. We brought her to the ABC and she said she wasn't surprised at his evidence. But then Julie dissolved into shaking, hot tears. She was embarrassed her mask had slipped on national telly. She whispered that she grieved for that little nine-year-old who bolted out of the confessional when she looked at her own kids. And for a brief few moments, as she tried to suppress sobs, she seemed to become that kid again. That kid was so hurt.

"I wasn't surprised because I guess I have come to the understanding and the acknowledgement for all of us victims I speak on behalf of that he will never acknowledge any knowledge," she said tearfully.

"(Cardinal Pell) played a significant role in my past, along with Searson and many others who have failed in the Church's name. But for my future he is nothing. He is insignificant."

Then Julie Stewart dabbed at her mascara, straightened her shoulders and walked out into the afternoon.

Louise Milligan is an investigative reporter for ABC's 7.30.

This post originally appeared on the ABC.

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