George Pell to take stand at child abuse commission

The former archbishop of Sydney George Pell takes the stand at a hearing on Monday to answer questions on how he handled an abuse complaint by a former altar boy, John Ellis.

The royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse enters the third week of a hearing in Sydney in which Pell's senior associates have been grilled on why the archdiocese disputed in court that Ellis had been abused when an internal church process had accepted his allegation as true.

Pell is expected to shed light on his role in instructing the church's legal team, which "vigorously defended" the case. It ended in a landmark finding, which some say created church immunity from abuse-related civil actions.

Ellis was a 13-year-old altar boy at Bass Hill in Sydney in 1974 when Father Aidan Duggan first sexually abused him. In 2002 Ellis sought help from Towards Healing, the internal church process for dealing with victims of abuse.
George Pell to take stand at child abuse commission [shared from Weave for Windows Phone]

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/24/george-pell-to-take-stand-at-child-abuse-commission