Cardinal Pell leaves Australian jail after over 400 days behind bars

Cardinal George Pell has left prison a free man after the Australian High Court quashed five convictions for child sexual abuse on Tuesday.

Australian media, including the national broadcaster ABC, showed footage of  Pell sitting alone in the back of a black Volkswagen car as it left the maximum-security Barwon Prison, outside Melbourne, where he was serving a six-year jail sentence.

About an hour later, he was seen entering the Carmelite monastery in Melbourne’s inner east.

Pell was behind bars for more than 400 days. His was one of the most high profile cases in the history of Australia.

The swift judgement was handed down on Tuesday by Australian Chief Justice Susan Kiefel in a near-empty courtroom in Brisbane due to coronavirus social distancing restrictions.

The High Court ordered Pell’s “convictions be quashed and judgements of acquittal be entered in their place,” the full bench of seven judges said in their unanimous decision.

“There is a significant possibility that an innocent person has been convicted because the evidence did not establish guilt to the requisite standard of proof,” the judges said.

Unlike previous legal proceedings, there were no Pell supporters or protestors outside the court on Tuesday.

Cardinal Pell, who has always maintained his innocence, called the decision a remedy for the “serious injustice” he has suffered.

“I hold no ill will to my accused, I do not want my acquittal to add to the hurt and bitterness so many feel; there is certainly hurt and bitterness enough,” Pell said in the statement to the media.

He said his trial was not a referendum on the Catholic Church or how Australian church authorities have dealt with paedophilia.

“The point was whether I had committed these awful crimes, and I did not,” he said, thanking his family, advisers, friends and legal team for their support.

It is worth noting that the High Court’s decision has come during Holy Week, one of the most significant weeks on the Christian calendar, just before Easter Sunday this weekend.

Pell was convicted in December 2018 by a 12-member jury, who returned a unanimous verdict that he was guilty of sexually assaulting two 13-year-old choirboys at a cathedral in the mid-1990s when he was Melbourne’s archbishop.

He was sentenced to six years in prison in March.

Pell is the highest-ranking Roman Catholic to be convicted of child sexual abuse. He is the former Vatican treasurer and a one-time close adviser to Pope Francis, and remains a cardinal.

In August 2019, three justices from the Court of Appeals in Melbourne handed down a majority two-to-one decision rejecting Pell’s appeal and upholding the jury’s conviction.

But the following March, the highest court in Australia’s judicial system held a two-day hearing in front of the full bench of seven judges in Canberra to first revisit the decision of whether to grant an appeal, and secondly decide on whether to overturn the conviction, ultimately adjourning their decision until it was handed down Tuesday.

Pell’s guilty conviction was based solely on the evidence of the complainant, who is in his mid-30s now and was described by many involved in the process, including prosecutors and the judge who sentenced Pell, as a compelling witness.

A lawyer for the complainant told dpa that he will release a written statement on Wednesday. 

The trial jury that convicted Pell should have “entertained a doubt” when considering the whole of the evidence as to whether he was guilty of child sex abuse offences, the Australian High Court said in its judgement summary.

The High Court said the lower court judges who upheld the conviction failed to analyse whether there was “a reasonable possibility that the offending had not taken place,” and that there “ought to have been a reasonable doubt as to the applicant’s guilt.”

The complainant’s account was inconsistent with evidence given by other witnesses that raised the possibility that there was a lack of opportune time when Pell is said to have committed the first of the two offences, the High Court judges said.

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The reasons given for the possible doubt include the fact that Pell always greeted congregants after Sunday’s Solemn Mass, that he was always robed in the cathedral according to standard Catholic practice, and there were always people around the sacristy, where the offence is said to have occurred after the service.

Archbishop Mark Coleridge of the Australian Catholic Bishops’ Conference said the acquittal would be devastating for some but welcomed by those who believe Cardinal Pell’s innocence.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the court decision “must be respected.”

The “mere discussion of these topics brings back great hurt” to many Australians who are not related to the case, “and when these things are raised my thoughts are always with them,” he said in a brief comment during a press conference on coronavirus pandemic. (dpa)