ULTIMO (NEW SOUTH WALES, AUSTRALIA)
ABC
April 7, 2020
By Kate McKenna, Sarah Farnsworth, Staff and Wires
Cardinal George Pell has been driven from prison to a church property in Melbourne’s inner east after the nation’s highest court quashed his child sexual abuse convictions.
The unanimous decision has been handed down less than a month after the High Court of Australia heard two days of intense legal arguments from the Cardinal’s lawyers and Victorian prosecutors.
Shortly before 12:30pm, Cardinal Pell was freed from Barwon Prison, leaving in a convoy of cars headed by a white Mercedes.
He was then taken to a church property in Melbourne’s inner east, where a nun greeted him at the door and helped him inside.
Cardinal Pell, 78, who has consistently maintained his innocence, was serving a six-year jail sentence after he was convicted in 2018 of abusing two choirboys in the 1990s, while he was the archbishop of Melbourne.
He had been accused of committing the crimes after he found the boys swigging altar wine in the priests’ sacristy after mass in Melbourne’s St Patrick’s Cathedral.
A jury convicted him in 2018 — a decision that the Victorian Court of Appeal upheld in a two-to-one decision.
But his lawyers went to the High Court, arguing the appeal court failed to take proper account of evidence that cast doubt on his guilt.
Today the High Court handed down its decision, granting Cardinal Pell’s application for special leave and unanimously acquitting him.
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