In the wake of Cardinal George Pell being excused from giving evidence to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in person, The Project host joined the city’s global Loud Fence movement by tying rainbow coloured ribbons to the gates of St Patrick’s Cathedral in Ballarat.

The Ballarat movement which has gone global, involves tying bright ribbons outside institutions to end the decades of silence surrounding child sexual abuse.

“We can get caught up in the emotions of anger or disappointment that Pell isn’t coming but there is still so much we can do,” Ms Coghlan said.

“We can turn this into a chance to bond as a community and move forward by not pretending it doesn’t exist because sadly it does. It isn’t just a Catholic Church issue, sexual abuse still happens today to children everywhere.”

Cardinal Pell succeeded in a bid to remain in Rome and give evidence via video link after the inquiry accepted a doctor's report which deemed him too ill to return to Australia.

 The inquiry also decided terminally ill Bishop Ronald Mulkearns should give evidence after hearings into child molestation and the clergy’s response to decades of abuse allegations in the Ballarat diocese on February 22. 

 Ms Coghlan said future children must be taught about the dangers of sexual abuse and how to protect themselves. 

She implored everyone in Ballarat to tie a ribbon to a fence and schools across the city to join the campaign.

“We need to talk to children about the importance of owning their own bodies,” Ms Coghlan said. 

“The more we talk about it, the more we help survivors because we’re showing them as a community we won’t sit by and allow sexual abuse to continue.” 

But Ms Coghlan criticised the lack of scrutiny surrounding the Cardinal’s failure to return, dubbing him an “untenable leader.”

"A fish rots from the head down," she said. "If you don't have the right people at the head of an organisation, leading and showing that they can bring people working together to reach a goal it will never work. George Pell had an opportunity to be a leader here and he's not."

Ms Coghlan said Cardinal Pell needed to return to Ballarat to face victims.

“Can he (Cardinal Pell) walk the streets of his hometown of Ballarat look people in the eye and say he did the best that he could for victims?”Ms Coghlan said. 

“Survivors have stood in witness boxes, reliving the most horrendous chapters of their lives yet his medical report won’t be released to explain absence?”

She called for a lifelong support scheme where survivors received ongoing financial and psychological support for the profound impact the abuse had on their lives. 

“I believe you reap what you sow,” Ms Coghlan said.

“I hope one day that he (Cardinal Pell) is signing off thousands of support schemes for victims given he counts all the coins at the Vatican and he asks himself: “Was I a true leader? Did I show compassion? Did I exercise the values of what I preach?” Only he can answer that.”

Since the Loud Fence was established by Ballarat resident Maureen Hatcher the movement in May last year, it has global with ribbons tied on the gates of the Vatican in Rome, at Westminster Abbey in London, in Bali, New York, Boston and across Queensland, NSW and Victoria.