The High Court finds three insuperable problems.ĭuring the times when Pell is supposed to have committed these assaults, the sacristy and corridor would have been bustling with witnesses, clerical and lay. He says these incidents took place immediately after Sunday Mass, once in the sacristy, once in a corridor, both times while Pell was vested for Mass. The complainant alleges two incidents of assault in the Melbourne Cathedral in 19, while he was a choirboy. has said, that the rule of law was not extended to Pell.įor those who do not know or need a refresher, the facts of the case are as follows. The High Court finds, as Frank Brennan, S.J. The High Court thus rejects both the outcome of Pell’s trial and the evidentiary standard that yielded it it recalls the courts to both legal principle and the facts of the case. The jury, alas, had sided with the complainant on the grounds that he appeared sincere when delivering his testimony. For the High Court holds that the jury would have been unable to render a guilty verdict had it “acted rationally on the whole of the evidence”-had it, in other words, done its duty. Pell’s critics will remind us that the High Court did not find Pell “innocent,” but merely ruled that the jury should have “entertained a doubt as to his guilt.” (Australia’s outraged commentariat has taken to describing the evidentiary standard as a “technicality.”) The ruling is in fact a comprehensive indictment of the operation of Australian justice with respect to Pell. For it seems unlikely that all seven High Court justices, plus Judge Mark Weinberg, whose Appeals Court dissent formed the basis of the High Court’s decision, were acting on orders from Rome and NAMBLA. And it should embarrass those who proposed that only sectarians and abuse enthusiasts could doubt the case against Pell. The Queen vindicates not so much Pell, whose guilt was always a dubious proposition, as Australian justice, which was on its way to disgracing itself. But “Believe all juries” and “Appeals courts never err” make as much sense as “Believe all women” and “Children never lie.” Our courts are human institutions and susceptible to human error, especially when a moral panic is afoot. We are admonished by right-thinking persons to affirm these lawfully rendered verdicts. It is because I find criminal courts to be so very bad at reaching just conclusions in high-profile sex abuse cases.
I was stunned on Monday by the news that his conviction had been overturned by a unanimous decision of the High Court of Australia. I expected George Cardinal Pell to be convicted in 2018 on charges that he had committed child sexual abuse, and I expected his appeal to fail before the Victorian Court of Appeal in 2019.
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