How the George Pell sex abuse case could unfold at the High Court
Today, 1014 days after George Pell was charged, the High Court is set to bring an end to one of the most significant criminal trials in Australian history. It will play out one of these five ways.
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After almost three years, today is George Pell’s moment of truth.
It has been 1014 days since the Cardinal, one of the church’s most senior global figures, was charged with sexually abusing a string of schoolboys.
He vehemently denied any wrong doing, proclaiming on that day that the whole idea of sexual abuse was abhorrent to him.
Many of the charges he originally faced never made it to trial _ some thrown out by a magistrate, others withdrawn by prosecutors.
But of the five charges put to a jury, Pell was convicted of each one.
He has spent the last 404 days in prison.
After the High Court hands down its decision it will likely bring a final end to one of the most significant criminal trials in Australian history.
If the appeal succeeds, Pell will be released immediately. He it fails, he will remain in jail for at least another two and a half years.
There is an outside chance the High Court could send the case back to the Court of Appeal, in which case Pell could apply for bail.
Whatever happens the significance of the decision has much wider implications than for Pell alone.
Finally Pope Francis will have to break his silence over the case that has cast a dark shadow over the global Catholic Church.
There have been hundreds of priests jailed for heinous crimes, but never one as senior as Pell, the pope’s former right hand man and Vatican treasurer.
Francis has refused to comment in any substantive way on proceedings, repeatedly blaming the ongoing legal process.
He has also delayed a promised Vatican investigation into Pell by the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith.
Today, the High Court will likely force his hand.
If Pell loses, Francis will have little option but to dismiss him from the priesthood, the most serious Catholic punishment other than excommunication.
It would make Pell the most senior figure to be removed from the priesthood in modern times.
The move would not be without precedent. Last year Francis dismissed former Washington DC archbishop and Cardinal Theodor McCarrick after the Vatican found him guilty of child sex crimes.
Locally, Australia’s child abuse royal commission will be free to finally release more than 60 pages of its final report.
Lengthy passages from the commission’s probe into the Ballarat and Melbourne dioceses, where Pell worked, have remained redacted pending the outcome of his criminal proceedings.
The findings of the commission are expected to be damning.
There will be ramifications too for the man known only as J, who testified that Pell abused him in the sacristy of St Patrick’s Cathedral after Sunday solemn mass.
Pell was archbishop at the time, celebrating his first mass in the cathedral, while J was a young choirboy.
J testified that he and another choirboy had broken away from the choir after mass, and found some altar wine in a sacristy.
They had been drinking it when Pell caught them and abused them, he said. He said Pell also abused him on another occasion.
Pell described the claims as “a load of absolute and disgraceful rubbish, completely false, madness”.
But a jury was convinced.
And despite Pell arguing they reached their verdict in spite of significant reasonable doubt, Victoria’s Court of Appeal found the jury got it right in a majority 2-1 decision.
Only Justice Mark Weinberg, widely regarded as Australia’s most experienced criminal law judge, was unconvinced.
In a 200 page judgment he said he couldn’t exclude the possibility that some parts of the former choirboy’s testimony were “concocted”.
One man who will be watching closely will be Robert Richter, QC, the high-profile criminal barrister who led Pell’s defence until his conviction.
He is said to remain firm in his belief that Pell is not guilty.
In the court of public opinion today’s outcome will do little to sway perceptions of Pell.
As he climbed the ranks to become the public face of the Catholic Church in Australia, his detractors quickly outnumbered his supporters.
He has come under fire for his hardline conservative views, and repeatedly been forced to deny claims he has been complicit in the Church’s cover-up of sexual abuse.
His support for notorious paedophile Gerald Ridsdale during a court appearance in the 1990s has plagued Pell’s career and public perception ever since.
Priest and lawyer Frank Brennan believes in the court of public opinion there will always be those quick to convict Pell of anything, and those who would always hold him in the highest regard.
And so it is left to the justice system to ensure justice is done.
When he was charged Pell said he was looking forward to his day in court, and the opportunity the proceedings would give him to clear his name.
He has certainly had that.
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