SYDNEY (AUSTRALIA)
THE NEW YORK TIMES
April 7, 2020
By Damien Cave and Livia Albeck-Ripka
Critics argue that Australia’s courts exhibited a penchant for secrecy and insular decision-making that resembled the Roman Catholic Church’s flawed response to sexual abuse within its ranks.
Cardinal George Pell walked out of prison on Tuesday after Australia’s highest court reversed his 2018 conviction for molesting two choirboys decades earlier — liberating the most senior Roman Catholic cleric to ever face trial over child sexual abuse.
The world may never be able to assess whether the court’s reasoning was sound.
The panel of seven judges ruled that the jury lacked sufficient doubt about the accusations against Cardinal Pell, the former archbishop of Melbourne and treasurer for the Vatican. Jurors, the court argued, ignored “compounding improbabilities” caused by conflicting accounts from the cardinal’s main accuser and other witnesses.
But no one outside the court case can test that comparison. The central evidence — the testimony of the main accuser, on which the case “was wholly dependent,” the judges wrote — has never been released, not in video, audio nor even redacted transcripts.
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