MELBOURNE (AUSTRALIA)
9News.com.au
August 20, 2019
By Benjamin Ansell
Tomorrow, the world’s most senior Catholic to be found guilty of historic child sexual abuse, Cardinal George Pell, will find out whether his appeal has been successful.
Pell, 78, has spent the past five months in the Melbourne Assessment Prison after he was sentenced in March to a maximum of six years in prison for sexually abusing two 13-year-old choirboys in 1996.
Pell was found guilty in December of sexually assaulting the boys at St Patrick’s Cathedral in the priest’s sacristy after Sunday mass.
He was convicted on four counts of an indecent act with a child under the age of 16 and one count of sexual penetration with a child under the age of 16.
Pell’s appeal was heard in June before a full bench of the Supreme Court, made up of Chief Justice Anne Ferguson, the President of the Court of Appeal Chris Maxwell, and Justice Mark Weinberg.
Pell’s conviction was appealed on three grounds by high-profile barrister Bret Walker SC, with the defence relying most heavily on the argument that the jury was “unreasonable” in reaching its verdict.
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