Multiple Accusations of Child Abuse Levelled against Australian Cardinal George Pell

By Ben Brennan
7 News
July 27, 2016

https://au.news.yahoo.com/vic/a/32167641/two-men-claim-cardinal-pell-abused-them/#page1

Police in Victoria are investigating multiple child abuse accusations against Australian Cardinal George Pell.

The ABC reports Taskforce SANO has been investigating allegations against Australia’s most senior Catholic for a year. The claims originate from his home town of Ballarat, as well as from Torquay and Melbourne.

Cardinal Pell has unequivocally rejected the claims as totally untrue.

Taskforce SANO was set up to investigate claims stemming from the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

Australian cardinal George Pell leaves the Quirinale hotel after meeting members of the Australian group of relatives and victims of priestly sex abuses, in Rome, on Thursday, March 3, 2016. Photo: AAP

It has reportedly passed its case to Victoria’s Office of Public Prosecutions for advice.

According to ABC, two men in their forties say the Cardinal touched them inappropriately at Ballarat’s Eureka swimming pool in the summer of 1978-79.

Torquay businessman Les Tyack also gave a statement to the royal commission saying that in 1986-87 he found Cardinal Pell naked in the Torquay Surf Life Saving Club change rooms with three boys aged between eight and 10.

"If there was any credibility in any of these claims, they would have been pursued by the Royal Commission by now," a statement from Cardinal Pell's office said.

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The 7.30 program says it has learned of two further complaints from the 1990s, which coincided with the time in which then Archbishop George Pell was setting up Melbourne Response, a Catholic Church program touted as its first serious attempt to tackle child abuse in Australia.

Those complaints reportedly relate to two choirboys.

According to 7.30, the ABC has seen eight statements by complainants, witnesses and family members.

Last month Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton confirmed officers had been investigating claims against George Pell but that it had not yet been necessary to travel to Rome to interview him.

Cardinal George Pell is seen on a screen as he gives evidence to the Royal Comission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse via video link. Photo: AAP

The Cardinal’s office in Rome has unequivocally denied any wrongdoing, releasing a two page statement which said multiple complaints against him had been thoroughly investigated over several decades with no untoward findings.

“He emphatically and unequivocally rejects any allegations of sexual abuse against him,” it read.

“…Claims that he has sexually abused anyone, in any place, at any time in his life are totally untrue and completely wrong.

“He denies the allegations absolutely, and says that they, and any acceptance of them by the ABC, are nothing more than a scandalous smear campaign which appears to be championed by the ABC.”

In the statement, Cardinell Pell’s office insisted ABC publish the document in full.

Yahoo7 has also published the statement in full here.

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