George Pell attacks police over ‘false’ child sex abuse claims

George Pell is calling for a public inquiry into Victoria Police after the leak of ‘false’ child sex abuse allegations.

Cardinal George Pell, who is now in charge of the Vatican’s finances, is due to give evidence to the royal commission this month.

Cardinal George Pell is calling for a public inquiry into Victoria Police, accusing the force of ­undermining the work of a royal commission by leaking “spurious” and “false” allegations of his involvement in child sexual abuse.

Detectives from the force’s Taskforce Sano are understood to have been examining a wide range of ­allegations against ­Australia’s most senior Catholic figure spanning a 40-year period from his early career to his ­appointment as archbishop of Sydney.

The allegations being investigated by Victoria Police are understood to refer to the period from 1978 until 2001 and allegedly involve several boys. Taskforce Sano is investigating claims surrounding a specific incident at a swimming pool in Ballarat, where Cardinal Pell was born and where he first served as a priest. The timing of the leak is sensitive as the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse will reconvene on Monday to continue its investigation into the Ballarat diocese.

Cardinal Pell, who is now in charge of the Vatican’s finances, is due to give evidence to the royal commission this month. He will do so by videolink after providing the commission with medical evidence showing he has a heart complaint and it could be dangerous for him to fly.

A statement released last night by Cardinal Pell’s office in Rome said: “The timing of these leaks is clearly designed to do maximum damage to the cardinal and the Catholic Church and undermines the work of the royal commission. The allegations are without foundation and utterly false.”

The taskforce is also understood to be investigating an allegation of molestation dating back more than 50 years, which has been examined and not substantiated by retired Victorian Supreme Court judge Alex Southwell. Those allegations, first made 15 years ago, prompted Cardinal Pell to stand down briefly as Sydney archbishop while Justice Southwell conducted an independent inquiry at the request of the church.

The police investigation ­remains at a preliminary stage, ­although detectives have ­interviewed at least one alleged victim, who was 14 at the time he says he was abused. Victoria police have also ­conducted raids on Catholic Church properties in Melbourne, where Cardinal Pell previously served as archbishop, searching for internal church documents. Four or five of the raids took place late last year, around the time the royal commission was conducting a hearing into the Melbourne Archdiocese’s handling of child abuse.

At the time, Victoria Police said detectives were “appealing for information in relation to allegations of sexual assault at the St Patrick’s Cathedral, East Melbourne, in the 1990s”.

“The male victims were aged 14 at the time of the alleged incidents,” Victoria Police said.

Relations between the church and Victoria Police have been strained for months, after the force was exposed as having overstated the number of suicides linked to child abuse by priests. The assertion, made during a Victorian inquiry in 2012, that 43 suicides were related to Catholic abuse, was a key reason the subsequent national child abuse royal commission was formed.

Police concede the figure is one confirmed suicide and say more than 40 per cent of victims on the list could not be identified.

The cardinal’s statement said the most recent leak of information that Cardinal Pell was ­allegedly under police investigation came as the royal commission was investigating evidence of “the historical failures of the Victoria Police”. Some of the allegations against him had been “on the public record for nearly 15 years”.

Victoria Police did not ­respond to questions about the ­alleged leak last night.

Additional reporting: John Lyons, Rachel Baxendale, Tessa Akerman