AUSTRALIA
Illawarra Mercury
John Silvester
26 May 2017
Cardinal George Pell is not someone who attracts public sympathy. He presents as cold and aloof and as someone who at best did not have the capacity to deal with systemic child abuse committed within the Catholic Church.
For an intelligent man he misread the play alarmingly when giving evidence to the child abuse royal commission saying of one case, “It is a sad story and it wasn’t of much interest to me.” (He later desperately sought to clarify his meaning).
But now he is accused of being more than just an arrogant prick with the empathy of a polar bear stalking a seal pup. He is under investigation as a child molester – with police likely to decide whether to charge within weeks.
This began when two men came forward and alleged that when students at St Alipius in 1978 Pell sexually assaulted them at a Ballarat swimming pool.
The Sano Taskforce investigated the allegations, three detectives flew to Rome to interview the Cardinal, a Brief of Evidence was prepared and has bounced around between prosecutors and police ever since. One source in the know described it as “an exercise in arse covering”.
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