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AUSTRALIA-VATICAN-ASSAULT-PELL
Cardinal Pell’s appeal decision set for Wednesday
SYDNEY, Nov 11, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – Disgraced Catholic Cardinal George Pell
will learn Wednesday whether Australia’s High Court will hear an appeal
against his child sex abuse convictions, the last possible avenue to clear
his name.
Pell, a former Vatican treasurer, is serving a six-year sentence for
sexually assaulting two choirboys in a Melbourne cathedral in the 1990s.
A High Court spokesman told AFP on Monday that Australia’s most senior
judges will hand down their decision in Canberra on Wednesday on whether to
consider Pell’s case.
It comes just over two months after the 78-year-old filed an application
for leave to appeal with the court.
He lost a previous attempt to overturn the convictions in Victoria state’s
Court of Appeal in August, a landmark decision that saw the judges split in a
2-1 verdict.
That division — which saw two judges back the jury’s verdict and the
dissenting judge side with Pell — is at the forefront of his latest bid to
overturn the convictions.
The long-running case has pitted the most senior convicted Catholic child
molester against a former choirboy now in his 30s, who two of the appeal
judges found to be “very compelling” and someone who “was clearly not a liar,
was not a fantasist and was a witness of truth”.
The third judge, however, found the victim’s account “contained
discrepancies” and there was a “significant possibility” Pell did not commit
the offences.
Pell’s legal team argued in their written submission to the High Court that
the majority judges applied an “erroneous judicial method” in upholding the
jury’s verdict that reversed the onus of proof onto him, an argument roundly
rejected by prosecutors.
The court will not hear oral submissions from the parties before handing
down its decision, which the spokesman said was not unusual.
Pell and his supporters have staunchly maintained he did not commit the
crimes, which came to light after one of the victims went to police when the
other died of a drug overdose in 2014.
During Pell’s trial under a court-ordered veil of secrecy, the Vatican
gradually removed him from top Church bodies with little explanation.
Shortly after his conviction, Pell was removed from the so-called C9
Council of Cardinals that are effectively the Pope’s cabinet and inner circle
of advisers.
The Vatican says it will avoid launching an investigation into his conduct
until after all legal avenues are exhausted.
BSS/AFP/MSY/0937 hrs