Cardinal to be jailed for sex crimes
Cardinal George Pell has been found guilty and is set to be jailed for child sexual abuse in the most sensational verdict since the Catholic church became engulfed in worldwide abuse scandals.
Pell, who was Vatican treasurer, close to the Pope and one of the most senior Catholic figures in the world to be charged with child sex offences, has been found guilty of orally raping one choirboy and molesting another in Melbourne’s St Patrick’s Cathedral 22 years ago.
Australian media has been unable to report the guilty verdict until now, due to a suppression order.
The cardinal was Archbishop of Melbourne when he abused the two 13-year-old boys and was managing the church’s response to widespread child abuse by priests through the ‘‘Melbourne Response’’, which he designed.
He was found guilty in a retrial last December, with the verdict sending shockwaves through the Vatican and around the world. A jury in an earlier trial was discharged, in September, when it was unable to reach a verdict. His legal team will appeal against the conviction.
County Court chief judge Peter Kidd has now revoked the suppression order that prevented media reporting the results of the trial and retrial.
Pell was stripped of his position as the Vatican’s chief financial officer and expelled from Pope Francis’ inner circle of trusted cardinals known as the Group of Nine, or C-9, shortly after the verdict, but due to the suppression order the world’s media was forced to pretend Pell, 77, stepped down due to his age.
On December 11, when Pell was found guilty of five charges including sexual penetration of a child under 16 – a charge his lawyer, Robert Richter, QC, likened to ‘‘oral rape’’ – the cardinal was granted bail and allowed to travel to Sydney to have knee replacement surgery before he was due to face another trial on more sex abuse charges.
The second trial has now been abandoned and the suppression order lifted.
Pell will be the highest ranking Catholic figure in the world to be jailed for child sex abuse.
Judge Peter Kidd has said Pell will be remanded in custody after a pre-sentence hearing today. He is likely to be sentenced in the fortnight after that hearing.
There was an audible gasp in the courtroom on the afternoon of December 11 when a jury found Pell guilty of one charge of sexual penetration of a child under 16 and four of committing an indecent act with, or in the presence of, a child under 16.
The cardinal pursed his lips and stared at the floor, frowning, as he sat in the dock while the guilty verdicts were read out.
Pell’s victims were two 13-year-old choirboys who were assaulted in December 1996 and February 1997. Both incidents took place after Sunday mass and while Pell was robed.
In the first incident, the choirboys broke away from a procession outside the cathedral and snuck back into the sacristy – a room where priests dress for mass – and were swigging sacramental wine when Pell walked in.
Pell, dressed in his Archbishop’s robes, told the boys they were in trouble and then exposed himself before sexually abusing them.
In 1997, Pell pushed one of the boys against a wall in a cathedral hallway and squeezed the boy’s genitals.
The second boy, who is now in his 30s, reported the allegations to police in 2015. He gave evidence across three days, and at one point said the offending was ‘‘something I’ve carried for the whole of my life’’.
The other victim died several years ago in accidental circumstances. He never reported the abuse and denied anything happened when he was asked by his mother.
Yet the evidence of the second victim was ‘‘powerful and persuasive’’ and withstood scrutiny under hours of crossexamination, Crown prosecutor Mark Gibson, SC, said.
The victim, who cannot be named for legal reasons, told the jury he was in shock after the abuse and didn’t report it for years, partly out of fear he wouldn’t be believed.
‘‘What would I do if I went forward and said such a thing about an archbishop?’’ he said.
He also feared his school scholarship would be jeopardised if he reported the offending.
‘‘If I mentioned anything like that to anyone it would be a pretty big deal,’’ he said.
‘‘It would be something that I thought perhaps would be dismissed or not acknowledged and I knew that a scholarship [was] something that could be given and taken away, even at that age, and I didn’t want to lose that. It meant so much to me.’’
So, he said, he put the events into one of the ‘‘dark corners or recesses’’ of his brain.
Richter, who has previously accused Victoria Police of running a ‘‘get Pell operation’’, told the jury the allegations were a ‘‘far-fetched fantasy’’.
It would have been impossible for two choirboys to break away from the procession unnoticed and enter the priests’ sacristy, Richter said. He argued Pell was never left alone by church officials while robed as the Archbishop after mass. – Nine