Victims of child sexual abuse react to death of George Pell

Victims of child sexual abuse say they are saddened that the late George Pell will take the secrets of the Catholic Church to his grave.

Victims of child sexual abuse celebrated news of the sudden death of George Pell, saying he should have done more to stop the crimes within the Catholic Church.

Stephen Woods, a victim of sexual abuse from Ballarat who travelled to Rome to meet with Pell in 2016, said he was saddened that the Cardinal would take secrets of the church to his grave.

“He had every single opportunity in the world to make right the abuse of children and the cover up by the institution and he didn’t,” he said.

“The church made it about protecting money, protecting status, protecting their power base in society.

“George made it about power, about who controls the narrative.

“But it’s about children who were abused or raped, who were psychologically tortured at the hands of these men.”

George Pell died in Rome aged 81.

Lawyer Dr Viv Waller, who represented the man who alleged he was sexually abused by Cardinal Pell, said survivors would remember Pell as being uncaring, and a hard-line defender of the worst elements of the Catholic Church.

“I will remember his legacy as a glossing over, and not responding to, and ignoring, allegations of children over many decades,” she said.

Dr Waller said both she and ‘Witness J” accepted the High Court’s decision to quash Cardinal Pell’s findings of criminal guilt, but said his failure to properly respond to the Catholic Church’s child sexual abuse crisis was exposed in the Royal Commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse.

“It’s a much bigger issue than one criminal case that didn’t result in a conviction,” she said.

“He was the leader of the Catholic Church in Australia and … was instrumental in a mean spirited and penny-pinching response to sexual abuse cases.

“He is a man who could have elected, many times, to take a compassionate and fulsome response … he didn’t.”

Michael McDonnell, a spokeswoman for victims’s rights group Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP), called for restraint against celebrating Pell’s life.

“We hope Catholic officials will show compassion to abuse victims and betrayed Catholics by avoiding a funeral service with full honours for Cardinal Pell,” he said.

“Restraint would be appropriate unless the church hierarchy wants to deepen already deep wounds.

Stephen Woods, a victim of sexual abuse from Ballarat, said he was saddened that the Cardinal would take secrets of the church to his grave.

Dr Cathy Kezelman, president of specialist trauma counselling service Blue Knot Foundation, said Pell’s death would be a difficult time for survivors of child sexual abuse.

“For many, Cardinal Pell was a divisive figure, whose repeated appearances at the Royal Commission … left many aghast.

“Many survivors were triggered, distressed and outraged.

The administrator of George Pell’s home church in Ballarat said his death had shaken the local Catholic community.

Father Ed Moloney, administrator of the St Patrick’s Cathedral, said the church had honoured Pell’s passing at mass on Wednesday morning.

“There was a stillness this morning. This is very much his home. There’s a lot of history here,” he said.

“It has come as a surprise. I watched an international interview (of Pell) recently and he looked very happy, I thought he looked quite content and was in good form.

“With all the strain that he’s been under the past few years, I was taken by the peacefulness on his face.”

Father Moloney said the church would also hold a 10am mass on Thursday.

In Mortlake, a parent of one of the survivors of notorious paedophile Gerald Ridsdale, said she hoped Pell would “rot in hell.

Another longstanding member of Mortlake’s Catholic Church and parent to two altar boys abused by Ridsdale said most local church members would be “quite pleased” by Pell’s passing.

“You just feel (Pell) knew what was going on and it was always swept under the carpet.”

In 2020 the sex abuse royal commission found Pell knew children were being sexually abused by Catholic priests as early as the 1970s.

The damning finding, that contradicted persistent denials of knowledge by Cardinal Pell, found he was aware of allegations against a string of priests including Ridsdale.