AUSTRALIA
Times Live (South Africa)
AFP | 27 July, 2016
Vatican finance chief George Pell is being investigated by Australian police over child sexual abuse allegations, a report by the national broadcaster said Thursday, as the leading Catholic cleric denounced the claims as “totally untrue”.
The new allegations against Pell being probed by police in Victoria State span two decades, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported, and came just months after the cardinal admitted he “mucked up” in dealing with paedophile priests in the state.
When he was the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney in 2002 Pell was accused of historic sex abuse claims but was later cleared of any wrongdoing.
The ABC said it had obtained eight police statements from complainants, witnesses and family members helping the police investigation. The report included claims Pell touched two boys inappropriately in a pool in the late 1970s.
But the 75-year-old strongly denied the allegations in a statement to the ABC, saying “claims that he has sexually abused anyone, in any place, at any time in his life are totally untrue and completely wrong”.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.