Lawyers acting for the Catholic Church have argued that legislation passed to close a legal loophole that helped the church avoid liability for sex abuse victims does not apply to the father of a former choirboy whom prosecutors had alleged was sexually abused by George Pell.
But Julian Burnside, QC, acting for the father, told Supreme Court Justice Michael McDonald on Thursday that if the court found the legislation did not apply to family members, it would undermine the purpose of the law.
Cardinal George Pell in 2018.Credit:Just McManus.
Pell was in 2018 found guilty by a County Court jury of abusing two teenage choirboys in Melbourne’s St Patrick’s Cathedral after a Sunday Mass in December 1996. Those convictions were quashed by the High Court in 2020 and Pell was released from prison after more than a year in custody.
One of the choirboys died in his 30s in 2014 from an accidental heroin overdose, having never made a complaint against Pell. The deceased man’s father, referred to in court under the pseudonym RWQ, lodged a civil case in the Supreme Court last month.
Chris Caleo, QC, acting for the Archdiocese of Melbourne, said the Legal Identity of Defendants Act passed in 2018 made the church liable for financial compensation for damage inflicted on victims only, because it was designed to apply to survivors of abuse and not their families.
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“We say that that context, as a whole, means that we are only talking about claims by the victim himself or herself,” Caleo said.
But Burnside argued against that assertion, saying the church’s submission was “plainly wrong” and not what parliament had intended when the legislation was passed. He said that such an interpretation could extinguish legal entitlements of families if a victim of child abuse dies, as in this case.
“The purpose of this statute was to make it possible to sue [non-governmental organisations],” he told Justice McDonald.
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