Cardinal George Pell filed an appeal in Australia’s High Court Tuesday, insisting that he is innocent of sexually abusing a choirboy in the mid-1990s.
When Pell was first tried in 2018 for charges of assaulting two choirboys while he was archbishop of Melbourne in the 1990s, the process ended in a hung jury, with a significant majority (10-2) favoring a declaration of “not guilty.”
In a second trial in December, a new jury found Pell guilty of the charges and in March 2019 an Australian judge sentenced Pell to six years in prison, with the possibility of parole after three years and eight months.
The conviction rested on the closed-door testimony of the sole surviving plaintiff, meaning that the jury had to accept the word of one against the other, since there were no other witnesses nor material evidence from the alleged events.
Last month, an Australian court in Victoria rejected the 78-year-old cardinal’s appeal against the abuse charges by a split judgment of 2-1. At that time, two of the judges said the former choirboy’s testimony was “very compelling” and said he “was clearly not a liar, was not a fantasist and was a witness of truth.”
The third judge, on the other hand, found that the plaintiff’s account “contained discrepancies,” adding that there was a “significant possibility” Pell did not commit the offences.
The Vatican issued a communiqué, reiterating its respect for the Australian judicial system, but also recalling “that the Cardinal has always maintained his innocence throughout the judicial process and that it is his right to appeal to the High Court,” in reference to the country’s final court of appeal.
“At this time, together with the Church in Australia, the Holy See confirms its closeness to the victims of sexual abuse and its commitment to prosecute, through the competent ecclesiastical authorities, those members of the clergy who commit such abuse,” the statement reads.
Cardinal Pell himself issued a statement as well through his spokesperson, who said the cardinal “is obviously disappointed with the decision today” but that his legal team would “thoroughly examine the judgement in order to determine a special leave application to the High Court.”
“While noting the 2-1 split decision, Cardinal Pell maintains his innocence,” the statement said, as well as thanking “his many supporters.”
Pell’s legal team are pursuing two grounds of appeal, arguing that the majority judges applied an “erroneous judicial method” in “upholding with the jury’s verdict.”
They will also argue that there was no occasion for Pell to have molested the boys in the priests’ sacristy during a 5-6 minute period after Sunday Mass ended when the area was a “hive of activity.”
A number of prominent figures have defended Pell, suggesting that he is the victim of anti-Catholic animus.
In 2017, former Australian Prime Minister John Howard came out in Pell’s defense against what some have called an anti-Catholic “witch hunt,” underscoring the cardinal’s well-documented efforts to root out sex abuse.
“It seems as if Cardinal Pell is being singled out to take the rap for the misdeeds of a whole lot of people and the evidence is that he was more active in trying to do something about it,” Howard said.
There seems to be a “get Pell” mentality in “some sections of the media,” Howard said.
Writing in the Sydney Morning Herald, Amanda Vanstone said the “media frenzy” surrounding Cardinal George Pell “is the lowest point in civil discourse in my lifetime.”
“What we are seeing is no better than a lynch mob from the dark ages,” Vanstone (a self-proclaimed skeptic of organized religion) said, insisting that Pell has been treated by the media “as guilty from the start,” with no presumption of innocence or sober assessment of the facts of the case.
“What we are seeing now is far worse than a simple assessment of guilt,” Vanstone added. “The public arena is being used to trash a reputation and probably prevent a fair trial.”
Others have denounced the legal proceedings as a travesty for a number of reasons, including the physical impossibility of some of the actions that Pell is alleged to have performed.
The former head of the Vatican’s doctrinal office, the German Cardinal Gerhard Müller, said the accusations were “absolutely unbelievable,” noting the absence of witnesses and utter improbability of events having unfolded as the victim claims.
“Nobody witnessed it,” the cardinal said, adding that that it would have been very difficult with “all the other persons” in the area after Mass. One could believe such an incident could take place in a private house, he said, but not “in the public cathedral.”
“The allegations against him are absolutely unbelievable, it’s impossible. It’s without proof, against all evidence,” Müller said.
Others have criticized the way the case has been adjudicated.
To judge a decades-old sex abuse charge with no corroborating evidence risks turning the presumption of innocence into a “legal fiction,” wrote Canon lawyer Ed Condon, and obliges jurors to choose “between the word of the accuser and that of the accused.”
In these cases, “the right to due process is at risk of becoming moot,” Condon said.
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