George Pell’s dark rape, sexual offending exposed

Just a few short years ago Cardinal George Pell was riding high in the Vatican. The undisputed top dog of the Australian Cathloic Church, he was lalso the third most powerful person in the church globally, had the ear of the Pope and was looking after the Holy See’s finances.

Now he awaits to hear for just how long he will languish behind bars after being found guilty of raping one choirboy and molesting another in Melbourne’s St Patrick’s Cathedral 22 years ago.

A jury delivered the unanimous verdict on December 11 in Melbourne’s county court, but the result was subject to a suppression order and could not be reported until now.

He is the world’s most senior cleric to be found guilty of such crimes. Physically ailing, the cardinal has been free on bail.

As Pell ascended the senior ranks of the Catholic Church, he kept secret a dark history of sexually molesting young boys. In the priest’s sacristy of Melbourne’s imposing St Patrick’s Cathedral in 1996, then newly-installed as Archbishop of Melbourne, Pell sexually molested a 13-year-old choirboy.

Exposed and pleasuring himself and still dressed in his ornate ceremonial robes, fresh from presiding over Sunday solemn mass, Pell then raped and abused the boy’s 13-year-old friend.

MORE: Timeline of the case, from claims to guilty verdict

Pell has always denied the claims, calling them a “product of fantasy” and “absolute rubbish” when interviewed by police in Rome three years ago. But after a month-long trial and three delays of deliberations, a jury unanimously found Pell guilty in December.

FROM SWAN HILL TO THE VATICAN

The former Archbishop of both Sydney and Melbourne was born in Ballarat in 1941.

The now 77 year old, studied at Monash, in Rome and at Oxford universities and was ordained a catholic priest at St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican City in 1966.

During his studies he played AFL and was at one point was even singled out as a potential future Richmond Football Club player.

His first posting was a long way from the Vatican however, on the banks not of the Tiber but the Murray. In 1971 he was an assistant parish priest at Swan Hill. In 1973 he moved to churches in Ballarat and then to Mentone as his star rose.

In 1987, he was ordained an Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Melbourne. A decade later, in 1996, then Pope John Paul II made him the Metropolitan Archbishop of Melbourne.

He was installed as the Archbishop a lavish ceremony in Melbourne’s world heritage listed Exhibition Buildings.

It was here in Melbourne that the abuse occurred.

In 2001, Pell become Archbishop of Sydney — a position he held until 2004. He was well regarded in the highest echelons of the Catholic Church and in 2003 became the Cardinal Priest of the Church of Santa Maria Domenica Mazzarello in Rome.

In 2008, while at Sydney, he helped bring the enormous World Youth Day event to Australia which saw young Catholics worldwide, and the Pope, descend on the city.

In 2014, he rose to become the Secretariat of the Economy of the Vatican City. He was now in charge of the purse strings of the entire church whose centre of the power is a sovereign enclave in the centre of Rome.

But the allegations of abuse were catching up with him.

He stood down from his position as Vatican treasurer to fight the charges and his membership of the Group of Nine Cardinals was suspended by Pope Francis in December.

Pell will be sentenced in March on one charge of sexually penetrating a child and four counts of committing indecent acts with children.

An appeal has already been lodged and Pell continues to maintain his innocence. Only one of Pell’s victims gave evidence at the trial. He knows the verdict and will hear Pell’s punishment when it’s handed down by County Court Chief Judge Peter Kidd.

The other died of a heroin overdose in 2014 having never admitted the abuse he suffered, not even to his parents when they asked if he’d been a victim. But his absence didn’t matter to the jury who believed the prosecution’s case and his friend’s evidence that the abuse was not the “far-fetched fantasy” Pell’s legal team claimed.

Jurors accepted the memories of the surviving choirboy, now in his 30s, about the awful minutes that followed that mass a week or two before Christmas. The boys, both on scholarships to the prestigious St Kevin’s College, had been “caught” by Pell swigging sacramental wine in the priest’s sacristy after sneaking away from the post-mass procession.

Pell planted himself in the doorway and scolded them. He then undid his pants and pulled his penis from under his ceremonial robes.
 

The court was closed for the survivor’s evidence of the events that followed — his recollection of standing frozen, watching his friend “squirm” as his head was pulled toward Pell’s genitals.

“Then he turned to me,” he said, in evidence quoted later by Senior Crown Prosecutor Mark Gibson SC.

The survivor recalled Pell orally raping him and demanding he then remove his pants, which he did.

Pell fondled the boy’s genitals while masturbating himself. The teen put his pants back on and together the boys rejoined their choir.

Afraid of jeopardising his schooling and not understanding what had happened or “if it was normal”, the survivor didn’t say a word for years. Not even when, a month or so later, Pell shoved him against a wall in a cathedral corridor and fondled his genitals.

“It’s something I’ve carried for the whole of my life … it took a courage much later in life for me to even think about coming forward,” he told the jury.

Pell’s high-profile barrister Robert Richter QC told the jury Pell had returned voluntarily from Rome — where he had diplomatic immunity — to clear his name.

He made the same point months earlier in a first trial that ended with jurors discharged, some sobbing, after being unable to reach a unanimous verdict.

In a move rarely — if ever — seen in a Victorian court, Mr Richter used a slide show to lay out the defence case in his closing remarks. It relied largely on the claim that 10 “independently impossible” events would have to have occurred in the same 10-minute window for the abuse to have occurred unseen.

He had wanted to use a graphic — compared by prosecutors to the Pacman game — to demonstrate his point but permission was denied.

Instead he relied on dot points and bold quotes.

“Only a madman would attempt to rape boys in the priest’s sacristy immediately after Sunday solemn mass,” he declared, with the words projected in big, bold letters on a screen behind him.

Victoria’s Court of Appeal will decide if the jury’s verdict stands. In the meantime the Catholic Church, tainted by a child sexual abuse scandal in archdiocese worldwide, must deal with its advent at the highest levels of the Holy See.

PELL’S CURRICULUM VITAE

BORN: June 8, 1941 (now aged 77) at Ballarat

EDUCATION: Corpus Christi College, Werribee & Propaganda Fide College, Rome — Licentiate in Theology, Urban University Rome, 1967 — PhD in Church History, Oxford University, 1971 — Masters of Education, Monash University, 1982.

CHURCH APPOINTMENTS: Ordained a Catholic Priest, St Peter’s Basilica, Rome, 1966 — Assistant Parish Priest, Swan Hill, 1971-72 — Assistant Parish Priest, Ballarat East, 1973-1983 — Parish Priest of Mentone, 1987-96 — Auxiliary Bishop for Archdiocese of Melbourne, 1987-96 — Metropolitan Archbishop of Melbourne, 1996-2001 — Metropolitan Archbishop of Sydney, 2001-04 — Cardinal Priest of the Church of Santa Maria Domenica Mazzarello, Rome, 2003-present — Prefect, Secretariat of the Economy, Vatican City, 2014-present (indefinite leave).