George Pell won’t stand trial on most serious sex charges: Reports

George Pell won’t stand trial on the most serious sexual offence charges against him, but he will face court on other, less serious, charges.

Australia’s most-senior Catholic cleric immediately pleaded not guilty to the charges, according to the ABC.

Pell returned from the Vatican in Rome in March for a month of hearings at the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court designed to decide whether there was sufficient evidence for the case against him to go to trial. The ABC reported that Magistrate Belinda Wallington had been considering her decision for the past fortnight on whether Pell should face trial.

Announcing her decision this morning, Wallington discharged the most serious allegations against Pell, the Herald Sun newspaper reported, which amounted to about half of the total charges against him. But the ABC reported that he would go to trial on other historical sexual offence charges. The Australian reported that he would face four charges in total.

The Herald Sun said the magistrate found that the complainant behind at least one of the charges was an unsatisfactory witness. Starts at 60 was not privy to the hearing itself, which started at 10am.

The full details of the charges have not been revealed, but according to media reports, the 76-year-old had been accused of offending against children in Ballarat in the 1970s, as well as in Melbourne in the late 1990s. Some of the original charges brought by Victorian police were dropped during the committal hearings in March due to the death of one of the complainants and the inability of another to give evidence.

Pell had vehemently denied the claims, calling them “utterly false”. A jury will eventually have the responsibility of deciding whether he is guilty or innocent of the accusations.

The Archdiocese of Melbourne responded to Wallington’s finding by saying merely that the Archbishop of Melbourne, Denis Hart, had confidence in the Australian judicial system. Pell is the third-most senior Catholic at the Vatican, where he is in charge of the church’s finances.

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