George Pell case: Ballarat’s deep sense of relief

One of Ballarat’s most celebrated sons is returning home but there will no fanfare.

George Pell and Gerald Ridsdale in 2002.

In the more than 30 years since George Pell left Ballarat, the Victorian gold rush town where he was born, schooled and served as a priest, he has travelled further and soared higher than any Australian clergyman, rising to a position of immense power and authority within the Vatican. Yet, through all those years, no matter how high he climbed, Pell has never ­escaped the broken community he left behind.

On a cold, winter’s day in Ballarat, news that Cardinal Pell had been charged by Victoria Police with historical sex offences was greeted, overwhelmingly, with a sense of relief. For the best part of two years, the prospect of Australia’s most senior Catholic winding up in the dock has dangled before an abused generation with the promise of ultimate vindication and perhaps, a healing salve.

Lawyer Ingrid Irwin, a survivor of sex abuse whose clients include two Ballarat men who have ­publicly accused Pell of abusing them, describes it as a watershed ­moment.

“He really had a gravitas in this town that carried him to where he is now,’’ she tells The Australian. “He is quite a formidable character and that has kept people scared and at bay, to a certain extent. There is a feeling of relief that ­finally they have been heard.’’

Pell at the Vatican yesterday.

The Australian is unable to ­detail the charges against Pell for legal reasons. As of yesterday, Irwin did not know whether her clients’ allegations were part of the criminal case against the cardinal. This much is certain: when the case proceeds to a hearing, it will unfold, as Pell’s career has, against the backdrop of a Victorian country town synonymous with sexual abuse by clergy. On July 26, when Pell is due to appear before the Melbourne Magistrates Court, the public gallery will be full of Ballarat survivors. They, like Pell, are eager for their day in court.

Pell served as a priest in Ballarat from 1973 to 1983 before his steep career trajectory took him to the archdiocese of Melbourne, the archdiocese of Sydney and, event­ually, to Rome as Vatican treasurer, the Prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy of the Holy See. His working life as a priest in Ballarat was shared with some of history’s most vile child abusers.

Pell outside his Rome apartment.

In his final day of evidence to the royal commission into child sex abuse, Pell described as a “disastrous coincidence’’ the fact that at least five paedophile clergymen were in Ballarat, preying on children, when he was stationed there as a priest. For about 10 months he lived at the Alipius presbytery with the worst of them; the now jailed child rapist and ­defrocked priest Gerald Ridsdale. In 1993 Pell accompanied Ridsdale to his first court appearance on child sex charges. Pell has ­explained his actions as a misguided attempt to provide Christian support to a prisoner. For Ballarat survivors, Pell’s loyalties on display that day were no coincidence.

Throughout four days of evidence to the commission, Pell was stalked by countless variations of the same question: Cardinal Pell, what did you know? The decision by the Victoria Police Sano taskforce to charge Pell with historic sex offences has darkened this line of questioning. Cardinal Pell, what did you do?

The royal commission documented 56 separate cases of substantiated child sex abuse by members of the Christian Brothers Catholic order in Ballarat. Nearly all took place at either the St ­Alipius school near Pell’s living quarters or St Patrick’s College, where Pell was schooled and regularly visited as a priest. Pell’s fraught relationship with his hometown was captured in his ­appearance last year before the commission, by video link from a Rome hotel, when he was questioned about his knowledge of ­appalling acts done to children at those schools by priests he knew and lived with.

Pell addresses the media in Rome in March 2016.

That Christian Brothers were molesting children was an open secret in Ballarat. The rampant ­offending of Brother Edward Dowlan, a teacher at St Patrick’s, presents as a particularly glaring example. Students knew what he was up to. So did some teachers, the principal of the school and Bishop Ronald Mulkearns, the man responsible for shifting known sex offenders such as Ridsdale from one parish to the next to conceal their crimes.

Cardinal Pell, when questioned 15 years ago about Dowlan by a journalist, claimed to know nothing at all. “I do not remember hearing rumours about Dowlan at that stage, a man I hardly knew,’’ he said. Before the royal commission, he admitted to hearing rumours but little of any substance. He testified about hearing stories of harsh discipline meted out by Dowlan and “possibly other infractions’’ of a sexual nature. He said he raised them with the St Patrick’s school chaplain and was assured that the brothers “had the matter in hand’’.

He recalled fleeting references to “misbehaviour’’ by Dowlan but said he was never given names or specific allegations. He remembered a student, a “good honest lad’’, coming to him about Dowlan but what the boy had to say didn’t quite amount to a complaint. “I can’t remember in any detail ­except that there were unfortunate rumours about his activity with young people,’’ he told the commission. “It was always vague and unspecific.’’ Pell said he ­trusted the Christian Brothers to deal with their own. “I regret that I didn’t do more.”

Pell gives evidence in February 2016.

Timothy Green, one of Dowlan’s Ballarat victims, told the commission what Pell should and would have known, had he only listened. Green testified that it was inconceivable that none of the other Christian Brothers teaching at St Patrick's, none of the lay teachers, not the nurse and none of the parents knew that Dowlan was molesting children. “It was just so blatantly obvious and every boy in the class knew that their turn was going to come up at some stage,’’ he said. He claimed he told Pell ­exactly what was going on, in early summer 1974, when he ran into the priest in the change rooms of Ballarat’s Eureka Swimming pool.

“Father Pell came in to the change room and said something like, ‘G’day boys’, and went and stood behind us and getting changed,’’ he told the commission. “Then I just said something like, ‘We’ve got to do something about what’s going on at St Pat’s.’ Father Pell said, ‘Wes, what do you mean?’ I said, ‘Brother Dowlan is touching little boys.’ Father Pell said ‘Don’t be ridiculous’ and walked out.’’ Green was about 12 years old at the time.

Green’s account was echoed by another boy who’d witnessed Dowlan’s abuse. He told the commission that when he knocked on the door of the St Patrick’s Presbytery and told Pell about the abuse, Pell became angry and dismissive.

Pell denied the exchange with the second witness. Counsel assisting the royal commission Gail Furness SC said it could not be resolved whether the witness complained to Pell or someone else at the presbytery. However Furness has no doubt about the veracity of Green’s ­account.

“Mr Green’s evidence was that Cardinal Pell dismissed what Mr Green said to him about Dowlan touching boys,’’ she said in her submission to the commission. “That Cardinal Pell was dismissive of Mr Green is consistent with Cardinal Pell’s evidence that ­before the late 1980s, there was a predisposition not to believe children in relation to child sexual abuse and that there was an ­approach to child sexual abuse complaints that if they were not presented clearly, the allegations should be rejected out of hand.’’

Pell says the allegations against him should be similarly rejected. Reading from a prepared statement in Rome, the cardinal said he had been the target of a protracted investigation, damaging leaks to journalists and a relentless character assassination. “I am looking forward finally to having my day in court,’’ he said. “I am innocent of these charges. They are false. The whole idea of sexual abuse is ­abhorrent to me.

“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 me an opportunity to clear my name and then return here back to Rome.’’

For Green, there is no joy in hearing that Cardinal George Pell had been charged with sex offences. “I think it’s a bad day for lots of Catholics who have had blind trust in their leadership,’’ he says. “If it’s true, it’s a shocking hypocrisy. If it’s true, it’s just appalling.”

Andrew Collins, another Ballarat survivor of abuse, says the ­decision to lay charges is proof that the system works. “It’s a day we never thought we’d see,” he says. “He’s been a fixture and identity around Ballarat for a long time, and I suppose you could say now he’s become an icon of the town.’’ Pell’s supporters describe the case against him as a witch-hunt.

Additional reporting: Tessa Akerman, Simone Fox Koob