George Pell: High Court grants final appeal against child sex convictions

At the end of last year, Cardinal George Pell was found guilty of sexually abusing two teenage choirboys during his time as Archbishop of Melbourne, with the senior Catholic then handed a six-year prison sentence for his crimes with a non-parole period of three years and eight months.

Pell was convicted of five counts of child sexual abuse in December 2018 at Melbourne’s county court, following a unanimous verdict from the jury. He was found guilty of sexually penetrating a child under the age of 16, which the victim’s lawyer reportedly likened to “oral rape”, and four charges of an indecent act with a child under the age of 16.

However the 78-year-old, who has remained in custody since February, has maintained his innocence ever since and has now been granted special leave to appeal against his convictions by the High Court.

‘Special leave to appeal’ is required in Australian law to initiate appeal proceedings against the decision of a lower court and, now that leave has been granted, the cardinal’s legal team will need to lodge a formal appeal to begin the process.

The appeal will be Pell’s second against his convictions, having previously lost an appeal in the Victorian Court of Appeal in August. In September, Pell lodged a special leave application with the High Court in a bid to try and overturn his child sex abuse convictions, which include the oral rape of a choirboy and the sexual assault of another.

It was announced on Wednesday morning that the High Court has granted that leave to appeal, according to The Australian, however it could still be several months before the appeal is heard as the judges do not return from their summer break until early February.

Pell’s legal team previously argued an appeal claiming the verdicts were unreasonable and that insufficient evidence was provided in relation to the crimes in the late 1990s. They produced a list of 13 reasons why Pell could not have carried out the abuse such as his supposed location in the cathedral at the time of the incidents.

Pell’s lawyers also claimed he should have been able to plead not-guilty in person before the jury instead of via video link. On top of this they said, according to multiple reports, that the judge should have allowed a video animation of where the abuse occurred to be played showing where the witnesses allegedly were following the mass when the crime took place.

This was despite the graphic details of the assaults that were heard in court. In the first instance, Pell reportedly confronted the two boys in the priests’ sacristy of St Patrick’s Cathedral, undoing his pants and forcing the head of one of the boys close to his genitals. It was alleged, he then moved to the second boy and put his penis in the boy’s mouth.

He was also found guilty of forcing the second boy to lower his pants and sexually assaulting him, and of later masturbating while assaulting the second boy. The allegations from the second boy, who is now in his 30s, were only reported in 2015 as he was “in shock” following the abuse and feared no one would believe him. Speaking in court previously, the man claimed he was also scared his school scholarship would be taken away should he speak up about the abuse.