Family of George Pell’s victim describes how their son changed after abuse
For years the ex-choirboy who was abused by George Pell had stayed quiet. But it was this traumatic incident that made him finally talk.
The family of one of the boys sexually abused by Cardinal George Pell has described how he changed from a cheerful young teen to a “different boy”.
The boy was 13 years old when Pell molested him and his friend, also 13, in the sacristy at St Patrick’s Cathedral.
Fours Corners last night also revealed that it was the death of one of the choirboys from a heroin overdose in 2014 at 31 that motivated the other one to finally speak up.
After attending the funeral, the second ex-choirboy finally told his mother what had happened.
She rang Bernard Barrett at the victims’ group Broken Rites.
“I answered the phone and she explained that her son, who was a former choirboy, he was very upset because he’d had a troubled life since his teens, and he was telling her for the first time, at the age of 30, about having been abused by a priest,” Mr Barrett said.
Both boys had choral scholarships to attend the exclusive St Kevin’s College because of their beautiful singing voices.
Although the boy had been happy at school before the abuse, things suddenly changed for him after his encounter with Pell.
The boy’s family has told Four Corners his son’s schoolwork started slipping and his attitude changed.
“He went from being this lovely boy who used to come to the football with me, who used to go and help his grandparents and helped around the house, to this boy wanting to go out all the time,” the father said.
“His whole attitude changed. His whole being just, he was a different boy.”
“At 14, he would spend nights where we wouldn’t see him. He would disappear for a day or two, and then turn up as though nothing had happened. His schooling, of course, became erratic, his attendance.
His father said their son ended up at the point where the school were threatening to expel the boy because of his behaviour.
His mum and sister have told about how the boy’s life took a sudden turn.
“Looking back, as a person, he changed. He did. He wasn’t the same person as what he was beforehand,” his mother said.
“I once asked him if he was … I can’t exactly remember the words I used, whether he was touched up or played with. And he told me no, but again, with a shrug. Again, little niggling in there.
“Little niggling... He said ‘no’.” And then, a while after that, again, I asked him and again, he told me ‘no’.
“And I was just so angry with him for not telling me. So angry. Sometimes I’m still very angry.
“It’s hard when you think a child can’t come out and say, “This has happened,” because most times they’re not believed. I would like to think I would have believed my son.”
His sister told a similar story, of her brother’s life suddenly spinning out of control. “It changed so much that his life really kind of … It spiralled. Yeah. It did spiral.”
“It’s very hard to explain to people that my brother struggled for half his life with a drug abuse problem. It’s devastating because it helps to explain a lot of incidents in his life.”
The boy started using heroin about a year after the abuse and died of an overdose about 15 years later.
His father said losing his son at 31 was a “waste of a life”.
Now Pell has been found guilty of abusing their son, his father says he is “disgusted in the Catholic Church”.
A sergeant overseeing Taskforce SANO’s investigation into Pell has also described the church as “difficult” to deal with.
RELATED: Why the complainant in Pell’s trial was so compelling
RELATED: How one man’s memory brought down Pell
RELATED: The allegations that have followed Pell for years
RELATED: Pell’s police interview released
Sergeant Doug Smith said the level of co-operation the church gave the investigation was similar to a “protester lying on the ground in the middle of the street not resisting the police, but the police would have to pick that person up and drag them off the street”.
Smith said Pell was co-operative but also arrogant.
He praised the other boy who came forward and testified against Pell, eventually leading to his conviction.
“He’s a credit to himself and he needs to be congratulated because he’s done a very, very good job at being believed,” Sergeant Smith said.
“All you can do is tell the truth, he can’t do any more than that. And for a jury of his peers to believe him, I mean, it’s fantastic.
“No-one’s above the law. The Catholic Church isn’t above the law.”
Meanwhile, another man who says he was molested by Pell when he was a boy in the 1970s will file a lawsuit the disgraced cardinal in the Supreme Court in Melbourne, the Herald Sun reports.
The suit to be lodged today names Pell, the trustees of Nazareth House (formerly St Joseph’s), the state of Victoria and the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne.
The 50-year-old man was a resident in St Joseph’s Boys Home in Ballarat from February 1974 to 1978 and says he was abused by Pell during that period.
He was a complainant against Pell in a second trial over allegations Pell indecently assaulted boys in Ballarat in the 1970s. The case was abandoned by prosecutors after a court deemed vital evidence inadmissable; with the man saying he was left devastated by the decision.
“It took a lot of courage and soul-searching to be prepared to tell my story, accusing one of the most senior Catholics in the world of serious criminal offences, and eventually I was ready to have my day in court,” he told the Herald Sun.
“But when I was told they had withdrawn the case I felt empty and that an injustice had occurred.”
The man’s lawyer Lee Flanagan said at least three other witnesses would testify they suffered similar abuse at the hands of the cardinal.
“There was a fourth witness, but he died after charges were laid against Pell. We may seek to tender his statement into evidence in this case,” Mr Flanagan told the paper.
A Melbourne jury in December found Pell guilty of five charges of abuse against two choirboys in the 1990s, but the verdict was only made public on February 26 after months of procedural secrecy and the abandonment of the second trial.
Other accusers come forward on Four Corners
Claims from now deceased man Damian Dignan have also surfaced saying he was abused by Pell and that he was “terrified” of him as a little boy.
“That man is evil. And he should not be there. Should not be there, where he is.
“He’s got a sickness,” Dignan said before his death in 2017.
Dignan described Pell forcefully playing with him in a swimming pool in the 1970s, in a game where he felt his genitals and anus forcefully grabbed.
Sergeant Smith also heard allegations from a man named Lyndon Monument, who described playing the same game with Pell in the pool.
“His hand touching your genitals and stuff on the outside of your bathers or your shorts, and then that slowly became hand down the front of the pants, or your bathers or whatever you call them. Under the water,” Mr Monument told Four Corners, saying Pell also followed them into change rooms and instructed them how to “wipe their testicles”.
“He’d undress and then he’d say to us to undress, so we’d undress and then he’d have a towel. He’d say, ‘Make sure you wiped under your testicles’,” Mr Monument recounted, saying the incidents occurred while Pell was naked.
A Ballarat local also saw Pell behaving inappropriately in change rooms, saying he saw him standing “stark naked” at the Torquay Life Saving Club.
Les Tyack told the Royal Commision that he saw Pell standing facing three boys about eight to 10 years old. He said he sent the boys off and told Pell to leave and not come back.
Mr Tyack said he has “no doubt whatsoever” that Pell was exposing himself to the boys.
— with AAP