LogFAQs > #970833521

DeadBankerDream posted...

Was Pell actually innocent?

I personally think he was guilty, but even if he was innocent of actually touching or raping children, he was 100% without a doubt complicit in allowing child sex abuse to proliferate under his watch.

Just scrolling his Wikipedia page brings up the results of a 2020 royal commission into child sex abuse in the Catholic church. As per the page:

On 7 May 2020, the royal commission revealed its findings regarding Pell, which had been made by 2017 but were withheld while Pell's own sexual abuse case was ongoing.[168][169][170] concluding that Pell knew of child sexual abuse by clergy by the 1970s, but did not take adequate action to address it. Pell responded that the commission's views "are not supported by evidence".[168]

For the case of Gerald Ridsdale, while Pell was a priest in Ballarat, the commission concluded that "in 1973 Father Pell turned his mind to the prudence of Ridsdale taking boys on overnight camps", with child sexual abuse "on his radar, in relation to" Ridsdale. The commission concluded that "by 1973, Cardinal Pell was not only conscious of child sexual abuse by clergy, but he also considered measures of avoiding situations which might provoke gossip about it".[168][171]

For the case of Father Peter Searson, while Pell was an auxiliary bishop in Melbourne, the commission concluded that given the information Pell had in 1989, he "should have advised the Archbishop to remove Father Searson and he did not do so". Pell had told the commission that, in 1989, he received a list of grievances about Searson. The list included statements that Searson had harassed children, parents and school staff, used children's toilets without cause, shown children a dead body and practised animal cruelty. The commission concluded that it "ought to have been obvious" to Pell that he needed to have Searson removed, while rejecting Pell's statement that he had been "deceived" regarding Searson's case by education officials.

To which I will say, if nothing else:

Pell removed Searson in 1997 when he had become the archbishop.[171][172][173]

Even if he had the power to raise these concerns eight years earlier, and didn't do so.

For the case of Father Wilfred James Baker, while Pell was the Archbishop of Melbourne, the commission concluded that Pell had the power to remove Baker in August 1996 when he learned that Baker was about to be charged. Pell did not remove Baker then, resulting in Baker continuing as a priest in a parish with a primary school until May 1997.[171] Baker was jailed in 1999 for child sexual abuse.[174]

The same page brings up allegations against Pell as early as 2002, Pell calling the prosecution of a former roommate a "witch trial" and fleeing the country happened in 2013, and he was extradited and sentenced in 2018. While he was acquitted in 2020 - proceeding to lash out at the ABC and other media outlets for bias against him - the findings of that royal commission were published in 2020 and arrived at the conclusion that he allowed child sex abuse to proliferate under his watch when he had the power to do something about it.

So whether he was a kiddy fiddler or an outright rapist - which again, I personally believe based on his absolutely bizarre and self-centred reaction to being called to testify against someone else - I think it's fairly clear that at best, he was complicit with child rape and he was light on child abusers when he had the ability to punish them.