AUSTRALIA
The Saturday Paper
August 24, 2019
By Richard Cooke
As the Victorian Court of Appeal affirms the cardinal’s guilt, he retains dogged support from many in the conservative establishment.
In an age when even amateur broadcasters can attain professional production values, few telecasts still look as spartan as a real-life court proceeding. In prelude, the live feed from the Victorian Supreme Court presented only three empty seats, a state seal and a test soundtrack of tinkling piano music. As the judges filled those seats, the court website became inundated with viewers and crashed. Once restored, the video sometimes chopped or slowed under the weight of this absent audience. Chief Justice Anne Ferguson’s delivery of the summary was halting as well – The Saturday Paper’s legal correspondent, Richard Ackland, tweeted that she brought “all the drama of a dead wombat to reading a summary of one of the most important criminal judgments of the year” – but this dour diction was, in its way, more compelling than a mannered performance might have been. The ruling Ferguson delivered was brief, clear and surprising – George Pell’s appeal on child sexual assault charges had failed.
“It is fair to say that his case has divided the community,” said Ferguson, and so it divided the court. There were three grounds of appeal. One was that the defence had been unable to submit an animation, since nicknamed “the Pac-Man video”, purporting to show that the offending inside St Patrick’s Cathedral, Melbourne, was impossible. This was dismissed unanimously. So, too, was concern that Pell’s not guilty plea had been entered via video link only, and not in the presence of the jury. But on the most important question, of whether an “unsafe verdict” had been delivered, there was dissent. Justice Weinberg felt the evidence of the complainant, upon which the case hinged, was not satisfactory enough to preclude reasonable doubt. His colleagues disagreed. They found “A”, as he was called in the summary, was “not a liar, was not a fantasist and was a witness of the truth”. It was reasonable for the jury to believe him.
The microphones recorded only silence from the gallery, and it was possible to forget the rest of those present: the press and lawyers, the survivors and supporters, and Cardinal Pell himself – he is not yet Mr Pell – who had arrived to court in a prison van, and would leave by the same means. Depending on their vantage point, court reporters said Pell “barely reacted” to the ruling, was “gripping the dock with his left hand and looking down at the floor”, looked “destroyed” or merely pursed his lips. Abuse survivors thanked the Lord for a decision many thought even more consequential than the cardinal’s earlier guilty verdict.
Media and legal circles had tipped a different result, partly because of matters of law, and partly because of a cruder calculus – that elite power is so seldom brought to lasting accountability. There might yet be another appeal to the High Court by special leave, but “A”, or Witness J as he is better known, has already run an unusually long and vigorous gauntlet. He waited many years to speak to police, only doing so when the other choirboy abused by Pell died of a heroin overdose. It was at his former schoolfriend’s funeral that he decided to seek justice. As other cases prepared against Pell fell away, it was his that proceeded to trial. The first jury was unable to deliver a verdict. The second believed his version of events over the cardinal’s. Now two Supreme Court justices have made the same determination.
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