KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter
August 21, 2019
By Michael Sean Winters
A three-judge panel in Australia has upheld the guilty verdict against Cardinal George Pell. On two of the claims put forward by Pell for overturning the verdict, the three judges were unanimous. On the third claim — the key issue of reasonable doubt — they divided two to one. Pell is already serving a six-year sentence for abusing a minor.
In announcing their decision, the justices emphasized that they found Pell’s accuser credible. In the Anglo-Saxon legal system, great deference is given to a jury’s assessment of credibility. An appeals court may overturn a lower court decision based on an issue of law, but rarely would they overturn a conviction based on a jury’s assessment of credibility. But, the judges went further, positively stating that they agreed with the jury in finding the accuser credible. They also slammed Pell’s attorneys who wanted to present an animation of the scene that the judges labeled “tendentious in the extreme.”
The other fact that was obvious in the judges’ statements was that these cases of sexual abuse rarely have a corroborating witness. That is not how sex abuse works: The perpetrator always tries to conceal the crime. The jury is almost always faced with a “he said/he said” situation. Rarely is there a blue dress offering forensic evidence.
Those of us who were never great fans of Pell can take no delight in this decision: The tragedy of abuse is cancerous, and it affects not only the victim, not only other priests who do not abuse children, not only the entire Body of Christ, but it seems obvious to me that the perpetrator is always himself a sad and sick person, to be pitied as much as punished.
This case, like that of former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, has left Pell’s friends reeling. Many of them could not bring themselves to believe what 12 jurors found credible. Perhaps they never will.
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