Australia: Victims decry cardinal's sex abuse denials

Top-ranking Vatican cardinal George Pell denied involvement in sex abuse cover-ups, as victims still deal with trauma.

Darren Chalmers was abused at the age of 14

Sitting alone on a bench in Sydney's busy financial district, Darren Chalmers is surrounded by dozens of placards condemning the Roman Catholic Church's response to child sex abuse victims like himself.

Cardinal George Pell in the courtroom

 Inside the building behind him, around 50 people, including a dozen victims, watch one of the Vatican's most powerful clergymen, Cardinal George Pell, testify, via a videolink from a hotel in Rome, as to what he knew about decades of sexual abuse within the church.

Over four days of hearings for the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse, 48-year-old Chalmers, who was sexually abused at the age of 14 at a boy's school in Melbourne, sat outside with signs, some which read "Pell go to hell" and "Pope Sack Pell Now".


He wasn't able to bring himself to join the other victims inside the hearing. "Being in there feels too uncomfortable, it brings back memories of things I try and forget. But sitting out here, I do feel proud, people see me and I'm helping myself and other victims who can't be here," Chalmers told Al Jazeera.

After he swore on the Bible on Monday, Pell's gruelling questioning lasted almost 20 hours over the four days and focused on what he knew about sexual abuse in his small hometown of Ballart and in the city of Melbourne between the 1970s and 1990s as he rose in the Catholic Church hierarchy.

During that time many priests who were sexually abusing children were moved from parish to parish and not referred to police.

Child abuse
The former Archbishop of Melbourne and Sydney, once considered a contender for pope, moved to the Vatican in 2014 after he was tasked by Pope Francis with cleaning up the Catholic Church's finances as secretariat for the economy. He is effectively the treasurer and many regard him as the third most powerful person in the church.

This makes him the highest-ranking official to ever face an inquiry into the Church's response to sexual abuse.

The Royal Commission has been running since 2012 and has heard from almost 5,000 victims, according to its chair, Justice Peter McClellan. Pell himself has previously testified to the inquiry twice before, but was called back after allegations emerged last year that senior clergy officials, including those working with Pell, moved priests from parish to parish when they knew they were abusing children.