A school principal gave up everything to blow the whistle on a paedophile priest. George Pell hung up on him

Former Catholic school principal Graeme Sleeman says he still remembers the day George Pell hung up on him.

It was the 1990s and Sleeman was in Grafton, New South Wales, more than 1,500km away from the small Victorian Catholic school he had resigned from in disgust years earlier.

He resigned and was exiled from the Catholic school system. No one would give him another job. He suspects he was blacklisted for his complaints about Searson.

He began to write to Pell, then the archbishop of Melbourne, explaining how the church had treated him and asking for help.

It was the archbishop.

What Sleeman did not know at the time was that Pell, in his former role as auxiliary bishop for Melbourne in the 1980s, knew of a complaint of sexual impropriety by Searson and did not act to investigate it.

The royal commission heard in March 2016 that Pell and other bishops had been briefed about a generalised allegation of sexual misconduct against Searson in 1989.

Pell told the commission he did not act because he thought the Catholic Education Office had dealt with it.

Searson died in 2009 before facing any child sex charges.

His lost career cost him and his family.

Sleeman says he spent 99% of his time at the school trying to protect his children from the paedophile priest.