The conviction and sentencing of George Pell are not matters that would usually attract commentary from PeakCare. Generally, we focus our attention on what’s needed to support families in keeping their children safe and well, and where necessary, the care that children and young people receive if unable to live with their parents for short or long periods of time. In the case of the men – choirboys at the time – who were the subjects of the offences committed against them by Pell, there is absolutely no suggestion that their families were anything less than highly protective of their children and neither man was in the care of the State as a child. PeakCare does however hold an interest in the safety and well-being of all children, especially when the ways in which the various systems, institutions and other entities they encounter during their childhoods have a deleterious impact on their safety and well-being. This starts to bring Pell, the role he exercised and the type of institution he represented into our focus. Moreover, PeakCare’s view is that the repercussions of Pell’s conviction have not yet been fully realised and are likely to spill into many aspects of the child protection system, the roles exercised by governments and their agencies as well as non-government organisations, their relationships with each other and their respective accountabilities.
