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The Two Faces of George Pell

By John Ferguson
The Australian
March 9, 2019

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Chrissie Foster won’t be in court when ­George Pell is sentenced on Wednesday. Foster could often be found sitting mid-courtroom after Pell was charged, her back straight, while barristers and witnesses fought over the detail of sex acts and ­intergenerational misery.

Instead of being there to watch the cardinal disappear, ghost-like, into the Victorian prison system, the relentless Foster will be in Canberra at a conference on the $4 billion national abuse redress scheme. “The sentence of Pell is the end of a process,’’ she tells The Weekend Australian. “That’s how I see it, whatever the sentence is. It’s like the job’s done.’’

Foster’s daughters Emma and Katie were in primary school when they were sexually abused by Melbourne priest Kevin O’Donnell between 1988 and 1993. Her children never fully recovered. Emma overdosed on medication and died in 2008, and Katie was hit by a car, suffering brain damage.

Foster and her husband ­Anthony, who died broken-hearted in 2017, sought help from Pell about the same time the cardinal, a jury has found, had sexually assaulted two choirboys in St Patrick’s Cathedral in Melbourne.

The Fosters found Pell to be dismissive and obstructionist.

Chrissie Foster says: “We have been the victim pool for the ­priesthood.’’

In many ways, Wednesday’s sentencing will be the beginning of the end of the legal debate about Pell. An appeal against the jury’s convictions is to be heard mid-year, two years after Sano taskforce detectives charged the 77-year-old cardinal with multiple offences.

Pell will receive a moderate to heavy sentence from County Court Chief Judge Peter Kidd.

 

 

 

 

 




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