Why we couldn’t report George Pell’s guilty verdict last year
George Pell was found guilty of child sex offences in December so why haven’t Australian news outlets been allowed to report the story until now?
For months, journalists in Australia were not allowed to report one of the biggest stories in the world.
That story has now been revealed: Cardinal George Pell was found guilty of multiple child sex offences in December last year.
Pell is the most senior Catholic cleric in the world to be found guilty of such offences and the case was reported in many international news outlets including the Washington Post, Daily Beast and CNN.
Australian media were not able to report on the decision because Cardinal Pell was also due to face charges at a second trial in early 2019, related to alleged abuse committed in Ballarat, reportedly at a swimming pool.
READ MORE: Timeline of Pell case, from claims to conviction
A suppression order was put in place because publication of the first conviction could prejudice the second case.
It was argued that Pell might not get a fair trial if media coverage of the first guilty verdict was published, especially because the trials were expected to run close together and so the publicity would still be fresh in people’s minds.
According to the ABC, Victorian County Court’s Chief Judge, Peter Kidd said the second trial would be “swamped” by publicity of the first trial and a jury may be more likely to believe he was guilty.
“ … (B)oth trials involve allegations of sexual abuse by the accused man against boys, accessed by him or known to him in his capacity as an authority and religious figure within the Catholic Church,” Judge Kidd said.
Judge Kidd described it as a “perfect storm of potential prejudice” that could damage Pell’s right to a fair trial.
However, that suppression order was dropped today because the second trial is not going ahead.
Prosecutors dropped the second trial because Judge Kidd ruled that certain evidence considered crucial to the case would be excluded, the Herald Sun reported.
Pell faces a potential maximum 50-year prison term after a sentencing hearing that begins on Wednesday.
However, lawyers for Pell said an appeal had been lodged against his conviction.
“Cardinal George Pell has always maintained his innocence and continues to do so,” a statement released by Paul Galbally, Galbally & O’Bryan Lawyers said.
“Although originally the cardinal faced allegations from a number of complainants, all charges except for those the subject of the appeal have now been either withdrawn, discharged or discontinued.
“He will not be commenting in the meantime.”
The jury convicted Pell of abusing two 13-year-old boys whom he had caught swigging sacramental wine in a rear room of Melbourne’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral in late 1996, as hundreds of worshippers were streaming out of Sunday services.
Pell, now 77 but 55 at the time, had just been named the most senior Catholic in Melbourne.
The jury also found Pell guilty of indecently assaulting one of the boys in a corridor more than a month later.
The jury of eight men and four women were urged not to punish Pell for all the failings of the Catholic Church.
“You must not scapegoat Cardinal Pell,” Judge Kidd told the jury.
The revelations came in the same month that the Vatican announced Francis approved the expulsion from the priesthood for a former high-ranking American cardinal, Theodore McCarrick, for sexual abuse of minors and adults.
The convictions were also confirmed days after Francis concluded his extraordinary summit of Catholic leaders summoned to Rome for a tutorial on preventing clergy sexual abuse and protecting children from predator priests.
Along with Ireland and the US, Australia has been devastated by the impact of the clerical abuse scandal, with a Royal Commission inquiry finding that 4,444 people reported they had been abused at more than 1,000 Catholic institutions across Australia between 1980 and 2015.
Pell’s own hometown of Ballarat had such a high incidence of abuse — and, survivors say, a correlated higher-than-average incidence of suicide — that the city warranted its own case study in the Royal Commission report.
As a result, Pell’s trial amounted to something of a reckoning for survivors, with the brash and towering cardinal becoming the poster child for all that went wrong with the way the Catholic Church handled the scandal.
— with AP