AUSTRALIA
Australian Associated Press via the West Australian
April 5, 2020
By Karen Sweeney
Deep inside Melbourne’s imposing St Patrick’s Cathedral, two young boys dressed in their choir robes snuck off to swig sacramental wine in the priest’s sacristy.
It was a room forbidden to all but a few – certainly off limits to the likes of the two 13-year-olds who found their way inside after a Sunday Mass.
By some accounts that area is a hive of activity on Sunday mornings, but for six minutes one day in December 1996 the two boys found themselves in there alone with now-Cardinal George Pell.
“He planted himself in the doorway and said something like ‘what are you doing here’ or ‘you’re in trouble’,” one of the boys said of the then-archbishop.
Dressed in his ornamental robes Pell exposed himself and molested one of the boys. He then pleasured himself and raped the other.
Those events are a “product of fantasy” and “absolute rubbish”, Pell told police when confronted with the allegations in Rome four years ago.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.