Trial gag put Pell at a disadvantage

Surprise is a factor in the bewildering public reaction to the cardinal’s conviction.

On Wednesday, I, like many others, listened to the sentencing of Cardinal George Pell. The details of the crimes for which he has been convicted were disgusting.

These are now on the internet — forever. Even if Pell is exonerated on appeal, these details remain. That is why his defence team did not want the details broadcast.

What is worse, because the proceedings of the trial were suppressed to protect the validity of a possible second separate trial, only people present at the trial, or in constant touch with those that were, knew what happened.

Furthermore, the evidence of the complainant — which, as judge Peter Kidd said, was the only evidence that convicted Pell — was taken in camera.

As the trial itself was not reported on, it seems strange to allow the details of the sentencing to be broadcast, especially as an appeal is pending. However, it seems the decision was taken partly because the judge was understandably unwilling to unleash once more the type of speculation that followed the trial.

It was clear from his remarks that the judge took into account the unique circumstances surrounding the case, especially the amount of vilification Pell endured for years before the trial, and after the verdicts, as a symbol of the Catholic Church. That his remarks about the crimes were parenthesised by his comments on the “witch hunt” and “lynch-mob mentality” against Pell is significant. Even though he properly instructed the jury to ignore this, many of Pell’s supporters still wonder: How could they?

With the details of the crimes made public in the sentencing, the vilification will be even more virulent, and the fact Pell’s conviction is under appeal will be deemed irrelevant.

So the decision to invoke a suppression order on the trial, prompted by a threat of undermining another trial on different charges, has actually worked against Pell and heightened the shock over his conviction and the details revealed in the broadcast of the sentencing.

Interestingly, Kidd rejected the “moment of madness” defence, while at the same time clearly stating that there was no grooming, no prior convictions or any offence since, nor any suggestion of a pattern of behaviour that is classic in pedophiles.

However, the narrative about the cardinal has already shifted from what was presented in the trial to every possible peccadillo of a convicted child abuser, including unsubstantiated lurid accusations in The Age alleging Pell’s “homosexual orgies” in a seminary.

The conviction has triggered the most serious confusion among many ordinary Catholics. It is palpable, and frankly many of my co-religionists do not believe Pell has done these things. Many others are only too willing to condemn him as a vile child abuser, a hypocrite who covered up for the church by setting up an internal system to deal with complaints and, what is more, was the face of the church’s “conservative” wing.

It seems that for many in the church it is almost compulsory to condemn the cardinal in order to distance themselves from the abusers. And arguments about the trial are split on political lines.

But many within the legal establishment point to a decidedly shaky conviction, the lack of substantiated evidence of any wrongdoing and, rather, evidence that pointed to an acquittal because of the physical impossibility of the crimes.

The first was supposed to have taken place in the priests’ sacristy within six minutes after an episcopal Sunday mass while Pell was fully vested and in his regalia, and the second in a corridor while he was in procession after a Sunday mass, presumably in full view of everyone else in that procession.

As the judge stressed, the jury found the cardinal guilty on the word of one complainant. The other boy died of a heroin overdose after telling his mother he was never abused. There was not a single witness who could back up the complainant. On the contrary, there were witnesses appearing for the prosecution who attested that they were usually with Pell. They included Monsignor Charles Portelli, the sacristan Max Potter, and several former altar servers.

Even the magistrate in the committal hearing who sent the cardinal to trial noted that “if a jury accepted the evidence of Mons. Portelli and Mr Potter … then a jury could not convict”.

So, how did these convictions come about? There was a strong feeling, expressed even in the public gallery and now in the letters pages of newspapers, that “even if he didn’t do it he was ‘the boss’ of the show”.

And there is another problem that compounds the reaction of many people: surprise.

The suppression order meant that quite suddenly the public learned that a man who had been the subject of a relentless character assassination, and who was thought of as a flinty, uncaring churchman, was now a convicted pedophile.

His conviction on these charges is conflated in the public mind with his conduct during the royal commission.

It has been overlooked that he didn’t have to return to face these criminal charges, even though Victoria Police set up a task force two years before there was any complaint against him.

Despite this, most of the accusations that Victoria Police wanted to inflate to criminal charges have been thrown out.

The most infamous of these is the so-called swimmers’ charges, which is the reason that the original trials were suppressed.

It was the centrepiece of a ­series of stories on ABC TV by Louise Milligan, also the author of a damaging book published before the trial.

Subsequent to the guilty ­verdict in the cathedral charges, the swimmers’ charges did not proceed.

But they had already done their damage by serving as the trigger for the suppression of the details of the cathedral charges.