Child-abusing Cardinal Pell’s six years prison sentence

This 12 March 2019 video says about itself:

Chief judge Peter Kidd sentences Cardinal George Pell to six years in prison, with a non-parole period of three years and eight months, for the sexual abuse of two boys at St Patrick’s cathedral in the 1990s. Pell was convicted last month on five charges of child sexual assault, following a committal hearing, a mistrial and a trial. He has lodged an appeal, which will be heard in June.

George Pell‘s lawyer has described his crimes as “no more than a plain vanilla sexual penetration case“, but a prosecutor says they were brazen, forceful and humiliating acts, at a court hearing to consider the cardinal‘s sentence: here.

George Pell’s lawyer, Robert Richter QC, has apologised for describing Pell’s crimes as “no more than a plain vanilla sexual penetration case”, after the words sparked a widespread backlash from abuse survivors: here.

George Pell sentenced to six years’ jail for sexually abusing two choirboys: here.

George Pell’s full sentencing, as issued by Chief Judge Peter Kidd: here.

How a devastated family watched their son’s life spiral after George Pell abuse: here.

Another Catholic man [in Australia], Andrew, said he hoped Pell would never leave prison. “I’ve got three boys in Catholic schools, it makes me sick”, he said. “I think the Catholic Church is shuffling it under the carpet and it makes me sick that I pay school fees to a Catholic system and then some of that money goes to the Catholic Church”: here.

‘The toughest story I’ve ever done’: Inside Louise Milligan’s investigation of George Pell: here.

By Elizabeth Li in Australia, 13 March 2019:

Cardinal George Pell Receives 6 Year Prison Sentence for Historical Sexual Abuse Charges

A worldwide audience has witnessed Australia’s highest-ranking Catholic … being sentenced to six years in prison, with a non-parole period of three years and eight months, for committing five child sex offences back in the 1990s.

County Court Chief Judge Peter Kidd’s sentencing of Cardinal George Pell was broadcast live on March 13 from Victoria’s County Court.

Kidd is aware he sentenced at “a time where in recent years there has been the exposure of child sexual abuse within institutional settings, including within the Catholic Church.”

“I am required to sentence you today in accordance with the rule of law … independent of any outside influences”, Kidd said.

The County Court’s largest courtroom was filled with abuse survivors, advocates and a global television audience.

In sentencing Pell, Kidd dismissed mental impairment as a factor in Pell’s decision to offend.

A mentally impaired person would probably not rise to the #3 spot in the Vatican hierarchy and boss of the Vatican’s finances.

“What you did was so egregious that it is fanciful to suggest you may not have fully appreciated it”, Kidd said.

The judge took into account the victims’ emotional wellbeing and impact on their relationships, culminating in an “immediate” and “profound impact” on their lives.

Kidd also addressed the relationship of trust between Pell and the victims, and the context of power imbalance.

“I think you did give thought or reflection to this offending and the only reasonable inference from the brazenness of your re-offending is that you had a degree of confidence that the victims would not complain either immediately, or by running at some later stage,” he said.

“You were a pillar of St Patrick by virtue of your position.”

Kidd said because Pell maintains his innocence, which is his right, there is “no evidence of your remorse or contrition” to “reduce your sentence.”

…

Kidd said the court must demonstrate the “grave consequences” of violating the law and deter would-be offenders.

“The offences you, Cardinal Pell, have committed, were each intentional offences,” he said.

Pell is considered to be a “serious sexual offender” in relation to three of the charges. The prosecution did not seek a “disproportionate sentence”.

https://twitter.com/MelissaLDavey/status/1105620929843912704

“I think the church has felt that their laws—their canon laws—override our laws of the country. And I think that today probably shows that that is just not the case,” Fiona Patten, who leads the Reason Party, told The Epoch Times. …

Guilty Finding

A Melbourne jury found Pell, 77, guilty of five charges on Dec. 11, 2018—one of orally raping a child and four of committing indecent acts with children.

The cardinal was charged with the 1996 raping of a choirboy and molesting another in the priests’ sacristy of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in East Melbourne, where Pell was archbishop at the time. His victims were two 13-year-old boys on scholarship to the prestigious St. Kevin’s College.

The jury also found Pell guilty of assaulting one of the boys a second time in early 1997 when the archbishop pushed the boy against a corridor wall after Sunday mass and groped him briefly.

One of the two victims died in an accident in 2014, while the other, now in his 30s, brought the allegations to police after years of struggling to understand what he had experienced as a child. …

The hearings in the Court of Appeal are scheduled to be heard on June 5 and 6.

If the sentence stands, Pell will be a registered sex offender for life.

By Louise Milligan today:

In the end, he was just an elderly, grey-faced man in the dock.

Not a prince of the church, not a cardinal, but a man convicted of and sentenced for terrible crimes against children.

A man who once flew first class will celebrate his 78th birthday in prison, and at the very least, his 79th, 80th and 81st.

A large part of it will be in protective custody because this man is and remains a lightning rod for discontent in the Australian community and, as a psychiatrist who specialises in child sexual abuse once told me, prisons are full of victims of these crimes.

George Pell’s reaction to receiving his sentence was only seen by those in the courtroom — the world was watching but the broadcast stayed steadily on County Court Chief Judge Peter Kidd.

We saw a man in a beige jacket and black shirt who seemed to have aged years in a matter of weeks.

His clerical collar and his Order of Australia pin were conspicuously absent.

CARDINAL GEORGE PELL SENTENCED The Australian cardinal, the highest-ranking member of the Roman Catholic Church to be convicted of child sexual assault, was sentenced to six years in prison for molesting two choir boys in Melbourne in 1996. He will be eligible for parole in three years and six months. [HuffPost]