Significant lead in case against Cardinal George Pell as evidence brief is returned to Office of Public Prosecutions for second review

By Shannon Deery
Herald Sun
February 6, 2017

https://goo.gl/T7938k

Cardinal George Pell gave evidence in Rome. Photo by Ella Pellegrini

Police had first asked prosecutors to review the brief last year, but Director of Public Prosecutions John Champion, SC, returned it without making a recommendation, saying that any decision on potential charges was a police call.

On Monday, Natalie Webster, on behalf of Victoria Police, said that investigators had ­delivered the brief to the Office of Public Prosecutions for ­consideration.

Sano taskforce investigated multiple allegations, including that the cardinal abused up to 10 boys in 1978-2001, while a priest in Ballarat and while archbishop of Melbourne.

The cardinal, 75, has strenuously denied the allegations.

On Monday, a report released by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse showed Victoria had proportionally more paedophile Catholic priests than any other state.

Sale was the nation’s worst diocese: 15.1 per cent of priests from 1950 to 2010 were accused of abuse. In Sandhurst, in central and northeast Victoria, it was 14.7 per cent.

The figure in Ballarat was 8.7 per cent — the nation’s seventh worst. The Archdiocese of Melbourne rounded out the 10 worst, at 8.1 per cent.

The commission said on Monday that of 309 Catholic abuse cases it had referred to police, 27 had been prosecuted, 75 were under investigation, and 66 were “pending”.

Opening the final public hearing on the Catholic Church, counsel assisting the commission Gail Furness, SC, said that between January 1980 and February 2015, 4444 people had gone to 93 church authorities with child sex abuse claims.

The average age of victims was 10.5 for girls and 11.6 for boys; the average delay in making a claim was 33 years.

She said abuse claims involved more than 500 unknown perpetrators but, of almost 1880 identified, 32 per cent were religious brothers, 5 per cent sisters, 30 per cent priests, and 29 per cent laity.

“Overall, 7 per cent of priests were alleged perpetrators,” Ms Furness said.

The commission heard the Vatican had shut down requests for assistance and had refused to release files on documented abuse cases.

The church’s Truth Justice and Healing Council chief Francis Sullivan fought back tears as he said that from 1960 to 2010, 1265 priests and religious leaders had been the subjects of abuse claims.

“These numbers are shocking. They are tragic and they are indefensible. This data … (shows) a massive failure on the part of the Catholic Church in Australia to protect children from abusers. As Catholics, we hang our heads in shame.”