AUSTRALIA
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
June 5, 2019
By Emma Younger and staff
George Pell’s lawyer has told an appeals court the child sex abuse offences the Cardinal is now in jail for are “impossible” and a jury should have found him not guilty even if they believed his victim.
Speaking at Wednesday’s appeal hearing at Victoria’s Supreme Court, Bret Walker SC told the court that evidence given at trial supplied Pell with an alibi.
In written submissions, Pell’s lawyers listed 12 other reasons why the offending could not have occurred, including issues with Pell’s location in the church at the time of the offending and with the dates of the offences in the 1990s.
Mr Walker argued Pell’s clerical robe could not have been pulled aside to commit the “atrocious acts” he has been convicted of.
Pell, 77, is serving a six-year jail term for sexually abusing two choirboys when he was archbishop of Melbourne.
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