Once the evidence revealed at the royal commission in Melbourne would have made headlines everywhere. Now it merely fits into a devastating pattern

Not long ago, Tuesday morning’s revelations at the royal commission into institutional responses to child abuse would have made headlines round the world. Priest after priest in the Melbourne archdiocese of the Catholic church was caught abusing children. And for decades bishop after bishop ignored these crimes.



The priests were caught abusing as soon as they left the seminary. They kept abusing despite “treatment” and despite being shifted from parish to parish. The church knew what was going on and for a very long time no one called the police.



But Melbourne fits the now familiar pattern of the Catholic world. Gail Furness SC, piling up the numbers in her dry opening address to the 35th case study of the royal commission, might have been talking of Chicago, Brussels or Caracas.



Catholic archdiocese of Melbourne had 450 child sex abuse claims in 35 years – inquiry Read more

In Melbourne over the past 35 years, 454 people made claims or substantiated complaints about child sexual abuse by priests, religious employees or volunteers. Of those, 335 made claims against priests. Seven accused priests accounted for 54% of all claims.

What sets the city apart from cities in Europe and America is how little the church has had to pay. Furness puts the bill for damages plus legal and medical costs at not quite $18m.



But claims are still coming.



Before the day began, the atmosphere in the foyer of the Melbourne county court was strangely cheerful. So much pain and so many years have brought victims to this place, but they meet on these occasions as old friends.



They swap war stories about the hassles of the past and their latest dealings with the church. Things have changed for the abused and their advocates – the commission itself is their triumph – but they report church authorities still make tough demands on them.



Absent but everywhere was George Pell. Though other bishops living and dead will have their reputations raked over by the commission, the hearings over the next month will essentially assess the record of the man who now sits in Rome as the treasurer of the Catholic church.



The cardinal has broken with the church’s legal team and its gentle determination not to cross-examine victims. After turning all his career for help to the top end of town, Pell has engaged the Melbourne mega-advocate Allan Myers to test his accusers.



To the disappointment of the crowd, Myers was a no-show on day one. But among the dozens of lawyers filling the first several rows of the court sat his junior, Sam Duggan. He will be Myers’ eyes and ears until the time comes.



The commissioners are circling Pell. They have already explored the foothills of his career: his time as a priest in Ballarat when he maintains he was barely aware of abuse by priests in the diocese.



The commissioners are circling George Pell

And they have examined his role as archbishop of Melbourne setting up his own scheme to compensate abuse victims. But now they are looking at the years in between: at his first, crucial post in Melbourne from the mid 1980s as an auxiliary bishop under archbishop Frank Little.



Early in that time Little sent Pell to deal with crazed Father Peter Searson who was terrifying children in the poor parish of Doveton with guns, knives, perpetual confession, hanging around their toilets and much other weird behaviour.

That he did nothing effective to deal with Searson in those years hangs over Pell’s reputation today. Parents, parishioners and teachers all wanted the priest gone. Complaints about the priest went back a decade. But beyond dressing Searson down once or twice, Pell appears to have done little.

George Pell should front child sex abuse inquiry in Ballarat, says Daniel Andrews Read more

That little will be closely examined by the commission. Expect hand-to-hand forensic contest on this ground. Furness warned in her opening address “there was no serious investigation of any complaint made” about Searson “during the 80s and early 90s”.



And she has foreshadowed a damning verdict by the present archbishop of Melbourne of his predecessors’ handling of the Searson scandal. Furness said: “Archbishop Hart is expected to say, there was a ‘complete failure of process’ in the handling of complaints in Doveton by the archdiocese.”



Pell will also be answering to the commission for his dealings with paedophile priests Billy Baker of North Richmond, Kevin O’Donnell of Oakleigh, and Ronald Pickering, who fled Gardenvale for London where Pell sent him each month the stipend of a retired priest.



Pell’s good work for the finances of the Melbourne archdiocese was documented dramatically by Furness in her opening address. Pell’s Melbourne Response paid victims so little. In Chicago each abuse claim has cost the church about US$1m. In Melbourne the tariff was $46,000.



It’s a little miracle.