“May you rot in hell, you monster” someone shouted at Cardinal George Pell as he left Melbourne magistrates court. Today the world learned that Pell the former Vatican treasurer, Australia’s highest-ranking Catholic official and the third most senior Catholic in the world, is convicted of sexually abusing two choirboys.
Pell has been followed by allegations and rumours about historic sex crimes for years — the crimes of which he was convicted date back to 1996 and 1997, but there are accusations going back to the 1970s and 1960s. He was convicted on December 11 2018. Here’s what happened, and how we got here.
2002
In June 2002, Pell was accused by a Melbourne man of having sexually abused him as a 12-year-old at a Catholic youth camp in 1961. Pell denied the accusations. The accuser had agreed to pursue his allegations through the National Committee for Professional Standards, the church’s internal process for dealing with allegations of sexual misconduct. The commissioner appointed by the church to investigate the matter found that the complainant man appeared to be “speaking honestly from actual recollection” but said there was “valid criticism of the complainant’s credibility” (the complainant had a criminal record), a “lack of corroborative evidence” and concluded “I find I am not ‘satisfied that the complaint has been established'”.
At the time, Pell said he had been exonerated.
2013 – 2016
In March 2013, Victorian police initiated “Operation Tethering” investigating potential unreported crimes Pell might have committed. By 2016 it was being reported that the SANO Taskforce — established alongside the Royal Commission into Institutional Response to Child Abuse to investigate “historic and new allegations” — was investigating allegations that Pell had sexually abused between five and ten boys between 1978 and 2001. In July 2016, police confirmed there was an investigation.
Meanwhile, the commission continued. Pell refused to return to Australia to face the commission in person, claiming ill-health.
2017
On June 29, Pell was charged with several counts of child sex abuse concerning several victims. Pell announced that he was “looking forward, finally, to having my day in court” and returned to Australia. The court imposed a strict suppression order over proceedings and ABC journalist Louise Milligan’s book Cardinal: the Rise and Fall of George Pell was voluntarily removed from Victorian bookstores
On July 26, 2017 Crikey attended the filing hearing, clogged with other media — the suppression orders rendered proceedings faintly surreal; interviews with survivors and their advocates, not a word of which could be used, the commentary limited to specific phrases repeated by every reporter: “… multiple allegations …” “… strenuously denies” “… the highest-ranking Catholic to have had charges brought against him …”
2018
On December 11, Pell was found guilty in the first of two trials. The verdict was strictly suppressed in the media due to Pell’s second trial on separate charges. This concerned allegations he molested boys in a Ballarat pool in the 1970s. The court believed media reporting of the first trial could deny Pell a fair second trial.
Judge Peter Kidd concluded there were issues with the evidence upon which the second trial based. Now that it won’t go ahead, the court has lifted the suppression order and Pell’s legal team have dropped their opposition to this.
Only one of the two victims survived to see Pell convicted; he gave evidence in the trial and issued the following statement through his lawyer:
Thank you for your interest in this case. Like many survivors I have experienced shame, loneliness, depression and struggle. Like many survivors it has taken me years to understand the impact on my life. At some point we realise that we trusted someone we should have feared and we fear those genuine relationships that we should trust.
I would like to thank my family near and far for their support of me, and of each other. I am a witness in a case brought by the state of Victoria. I have put my trust in the police and the criminal justice system. The process has been stressful and it is not over yet.
I need space and time to cope with the ongoing criminal process. I understand this is a big news story but please don’t reveal my identity.
I ask that the media respect my privacy. I don’t want to give any interviews. Please don’t come to my home. I want to protect my young family and my parents. I don’t want them swept into the spotlight. I am not a spokesperson about child sexual abuse. There are many other survivors and advocates who bravely fill this role.
I am just a regular guy working to support and protect my family as best I can.
Thank you for your support and understanding.
So, hopefully Louise Milligan’s book will now be available in Victorian bookshops? It was a good read. I thought the Ballarat swimming pool allegations were very credible.
But anyway. Preventing sale (or trying to prevent sale) of a dead tree edition of a book in Victoria seems a pretty pointless exercise, with eBooks being easily available. The solicitors could have just excluded any potential juror who had read the book.
Yes hopefully this book, with all the other stories that must have taken a lot of strength & fortitude to tell…
The vulnerable people, the stories of lost lives & painful experiences, will finally be able to come out of the shadows where they’ve been kept hidden for too long….
As a professional in the therapy fields my concern is not only for the victims who have survived & are trying to get on with their lives but also the families of those that couldn’t live with their experiences & either couldn’t cope with their past, or who struggle (d) with mental or physical health issues…..
Cardinal Pell will likely be put out to pasture with a generous stipend, away from the public, judgement & censuring of his behaviour…
My greatest concern is around the re-traumatising of these vulnerable individuals that are wanting to move on with their lives, this type of thing needs to be looked at in a safe & supportive environment….
This is where the courts need to quietly step in & protect the victims & their families identity & recommend that there is a proper support mechanism made available to & for them, to ensure these individuals don’t have to continue to experience the fall out from a very public disgrace & the past that will not stay where it needs to be…
It is first up on the MUP website. I picked up a copy in BRISBANE last week 🙂
“Today the world learned that Pell the former Vatican treasurer, Australia’s highest-ranking Catholic official and the third most senior Catholic in the world, is convicted of sexually abusing two choirboys.”
Actually the rest of the world learned about it in early December, as did many Australians who were alerted by overseas friends and publications.
“But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea…” said a man once long ago.
Allegedly
Fear not folks. The man is of powerful and tied to the powerful in religion and politics and will receive the best justice money can buy.
As a non-believer looking on from the outside, it seems to me that the Church has reached a fork in the road. It can admit women to the priesthood and allow priests to marry or it can take the other track that wanders to the wilderness that humankind has assigned all its other forgotten religions to.
Since the pope, only this week repeated his previous remarks about women never being admitted into the sect as anything other than servants of those with the power, we can only hope the hierarchy will do as you say – be confined to history.
Doubt it though, for some people power through association is all they know, or care about. Ask any of our adherent politicians. That ‘association’ has been very useful to them. Not to us, but to them.
This evil old bastard will escape hell only because there is no such place – we can only hope that his remaining years in prison will be near enough.
He will also miss out on eternal life, but for the same reason – heaven is just a wicked scam.