SYDNEY (AUSTRALIA)
Washington Post
August 20, 2019
By A. Odysseus Patrick
The most senior priest jailed for child abuse in the 2,000-year history of the Catholic Church will face a 21st century form of justice: a decision on his appeal beamed live over the Internet.
Australian Cardinal George Pell will appear before three judges of the Victorian Supreme Court on Wednesday morning in Australia, and learn if he has been able to overturn a conviction for sexually assaulting two choir boys.
Justices Anne Ferguson, Chris Maxwell and Mark Weinberg could uphold the conviction, order a retrial, or dismiss some or all of the charges and allow the 78 year-old to walk out of the court building in downtown Melbourne a free man.
The global broadcast is ironic given the judge who oversaw Pell’s original trial threatened to charge many of Australia’s top newspaper editors, and some overseas, for flouting a gag order covering Pell’s guilty finding by a jury last December.
The Washington Post was among the media outlets that reported on the verdict. Some of the journalists were cited for contempt of court charges that are still pending. The gag order was dropped two months later.
Huge domestic and global interest then led to the broadcast, live on Australian television, of Pell’s sentencing to six years in jail on March 13, and Wednesday’s planned live stream of the appeal decision. The broadcast will be delayed by 15 seconds to allow the court to censor any interruption or other unexpected event.
Lawyers said it was impossible to predict if the cardinal’s appeal would succeed. In their submissions, Pell’s lawyers argued the original trial was unfair because the cardinal wasn’t able to present evidence they say demonstrated it would have been impractical for him to molest the boys given the amount of time available after conducting mass at Melbourne’s grand Catholic cathedral, St Patrick’s, in December 1996.
Pell, who oversaw the Vatican’s finances before he was charged, was found guilty of sexually assaulting two 13-year-old boys who had snuck into his change room, or sacristy, and drunk sacramental wine.
The conservative prelate’s fate has created a schism among Catholics. Supporters believe Pell, who was convicted on the testimony of a single witness, a victim, is being used to punish an entire church for decades of child abuse around the world.
Detractors say Pell, as Australia’s most senior Catholic, personifies the church’s institutional indifference to the welfare of thousands of boys and girls who were abused in its care.
David Hamer, a professor of evidence law at the University of Sydney, said the case would hinge on the perceived credibility of the alleged victim, whose identity has never been revealed to the public.
Although the three appeal judges didn’t hear from the man in person, they watched a video recording of his allegations against Pell, and the cardinal’s denials in an interview with police detectives.
“So the appeal court, in this sense, can put itself in the position of the jury,” Hamer said in an email. “And appeal courts are more prepared to intervene where cases turn on circumstantial evidence — in this case, the argument that it would have been impossible for Pell to commit the crime.”
Last August the church publicly apologized for the thousands of victims of abuse in Australia and pledged that it would never happen again.
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