Why didn’t you look after the kids, George Pell?

Only George Pell and his alleged victims know if he’s guilty of child sexual abuse, writes Claire Harvey. But what we do know is he failed to be the champion he should have been for little kids who needed a saviour.

Is George Pell a scapegoat?

Possibly. And if you don’t understand why, or if you’re raging about how “the elites” have sacrificed a good man, you’re way out of touch.

In my view — and bear in mind neither I nor any other journalist has witnessed the complainant’s evidence first-hand because of the rules of Victorian courts — Pell’s conviction is evidence of a massive cultural shift that’s been completely missed by people who claim to speak for the masses.

According to them, the people are wise, and the ­ordinary Australian always gets it right, apart from when a jury of 12 delivers a verdict that threatens everything the old guard wants to ­believe in.

RELATED: Catholics mustn’t return to the culture of denial

The conservatives are ­arguing this week that ­George Pell cannot possibly be guilty because nobody would brazenly assault a child in circumstances where someone  might catch them.

Protesters outside the County Court where Cardinal George Pell had his bail revoked this week. Picture: AP/Andy Brownbill

That speaks to a rather limited understanding of what we can now see to have been the culture in the Catholic Church throughout its history, including in the 1990s. It was an environment where, clearly, the abuse of children was not considered a problem — and where children were not ­empowered to complain, or believed when they did.

George Pell accompanied notorious paedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale to court and then oversaw a “Melbourne response” to child sexual assault which had as its primary aim the protection of church assets from massive financial penalties.

George Pell with Father Gerald Ridsdale outside court in 1993.

Is it feasible that such a man would force himself sexually upon children in the semipublic environment of a cathedral?

RELATED: How Pell became the Vatican’s sacrificial lamb

I don’t know. I have no idea whether Pell is guilty or not. (And nor does anyone else except Pell and the ­alleged victims, by the way.)

But I think the fact that a jury was prepared to convict him on the word of just one victim, with no corroborating evidence, demonstrates that his oft-repeated attitude towards this whole issue has enraged the broader community to the extent they were happy to see him go to jail. If there was any doubt, George Pell didn’t get the benefit of it. That doesn’t make the jury’s decision right, if Pell was in fact ­innocent.

But it does explain it.

RELATED: Church must cough up every paedophile priest record

And if you’re claiming to be “baffled” or “stunned” by the verdict, you’re not grasping this: Australia is quite rightly revolted by the Catholic Church, and Pell was its supremely powerful boss.

“It’s a sad story and it was not of much interest to me,” is how Pell described his feelings about the alleged crimes of Ridsdale. That was not a throwaway dinner-party remark — that was his evidence to a Royal Commission investigating whether institutions like the Catholic Church could be trusted to look after children. Clearly, they could not.

George Pell, once the third most powerful man in the Vatican and Australia's most senior Catholic, has been found guilty of child sexual abuse. Picture: AAP/David Crosling

I don’t know whether or not George Pell is a child abuser. But I do know he presided over an organisation which both actively and passively abused and ­betrayed children. George Pell himself failed to protect children who were in his care as a Bishop and then as Archbishop, and he failed to be the champion he should have been for little kids who needed a saviour.

He displayed frankly sickening arrogance when asked to account for his ­inaction and that of his ­organisation.

Who are “the elites” in this scenario? I’d say it’s the immensely powerful men who ran this organisation with impunity and did nothing to make it safe.

And maybe that jury of 12 thought, well George Pell, if you didn’t actually do this yourself you might as well have done, for all you did to protect these vulnerable ­little souls.

Maybe, in his cell, George Pell will have an opportunity to consider that if he is not guilty, as he claims, he is being punished for the sins of omission, of cowardice and of wilful ignorance ­committed not only by him but by every Catholic leader in the world.

Claire Harvey is the deputy editor of the Sunday Telegraph.
@chmharvey