George Pell: Chief Judge Peter Kidd’s sentencing remarks in Pell case

What Chief Judge Peter Kidd said as he sentenced George Pell to six years jail for child sex offences | FULL SENTENCING TRANSCRIPT

People watch online outside Melbourne County Court as Chief Judge Peter Kidd hands down his sentence. Picture: Michael Dodge/Getty

Chief Judge Peter Kidd today took more than 70 minutes to deliver George Pell his sentence.

Here is the full sentencing transcript.

Mobile readers can view Judge Kidd’s full transcript here.

Here are some of his key remarks:

* “The acts were sexually graphic. Both victims were visibly and audibly distressed during this offending.”

* “You were confident your victims would not complain. It is fanciful to suggest that you may not have fully appreciated this.”

* “There is an added layer of degradation and humiliation that each of your victims must have felt in knowing that their abuse had been witnessed by the other.”

* “You had had ample time to reflect upon your previous abuse … despite this, you still indecently acted against (victim J), and did so with what I consider to be a degree of physical aggression and venom.”

* “I consider your moral culpability across both episodes to be high.”

* “There was a clear relationship of trust with the victims, and you breached that trust and abused your position to facilitate this offending.”

* “Your obvious status as Archbishop cast a powerful shadow over this offending.”

* “I would characterise these breaches and abuses as grave.”

* “You continued to offend with callous indifference to the victim’s distress.”

* “The offending which the jury has found you have engaged in was, on any view, breathtakingly arrogant.”

* “There is no evidence of your remorse or contrition for me to act upon to reduce your sentence.”

* “On the one hand I must punish and denounce you for this appalling offending. Yet on the other hand, I am conscious of the heavy reality that I am about to sentence you, a man of advanced years, who has led an otherwise blameless life, to a significant period of imprisonment, which will account for a good portion of the balance of your life.”

AAP