Facts on (Cardinal) George Pell just don’t fit

In the face of facts, even the nay-sayers are beginning to see what the true believers have known all along – George Pell is innocent, and this is why, writes Andrew Bolt

Their hopes soared last Thursday, after Kerri Judd QC tried to tell the High Court why Pell really did rape two boys right after Mass.

Judd tried her best, but the headlines for Victoria’s Director of Public Prosecutions after the court’s seven judges had finished with her were terrible.

No one should accuse Judd of incompetence. I suspect she’s a conscientious lawyer who had to wrestle with an awkward reality: Pell could not have raped those boys when the prosecution had claimed he did.

That’s why Judd seemed to be backtracking: maybe the rapes didn’t take as long as first said. Maybe they started much later.

See, here is her problem – one I argued here last year, after Victoria’s Court of Appeal shockingly dismissed Pell’s appeal in a split decision.

The prosecution back then said Pell raped those boys for at least five minutes in the sacristy at the back of his Cathedral, and during the “five or six” minutes of private “quiet time” for public prayer right after Mass, before altar servers cleared away the sacred vessels used in the Mass and stored them in that same sacristy.

Yet during those “five or six minutes”, Pell was actually outside the front of the Cathedral talking to parishioners, and for at least 10 minutes, according to unchallenged witnesses.

I suspect it’s because even Victoria’s Director of Public Prosecutions believes Pell may not have committed the rapes at the time that was alleged. The facts don’t fit.

Now let’s see if the High Court thinks so, too. We could know as soon as this week.

Unfortunately the article is behind a paywall, but it's the clearest explanation I have seen of the critical flaw in the case against Cardinal Pell that has lead many people - including myself - to always believe that at the very least, there should have been reasonable doubt about the accusations against him.

The timing just does not make sense. The idea that an Archbishop (as he then was) could have committed such crimes in the Sacristy of the Cathedral immediately after Mass just defies common sense. Anybody who is aware of the events surrounding a Catholic Mass would understand that even in a small church, the sacristy after Mass would have people going backwards and forwards to it removing chalices and plates and altar cloths, etc, altar servers and priests disrobing... and at a Cathedral immediately after a High Mass just before Christmas, the place would have been a hive of activity.

This is not the only problem with the prosecution case - but it's the big one. It really is.

The Director of Public Prosecution (I believe roughly equivalent to a District Attorney in the US in terms of responsibility) finds herself in the position of having to defend the prosecution at appeal - I think, in fairness, it should be mentioned that the DPP (as a body - the term is used to refer to the overall organisation as well as the person holding the position) twice rejected the idea of prosecuting Pell on these charges because they felt there was insufficient evidence - the only reason the case proceeded was because Victoria Police took the unusual (though legal) procedure of prosecuting themselves against DPP advice. If Pell's appeal succeeds, I expect that decision will come under a great deal of scrutiny.

The full ruling of the High Court is likely to take months to be delivered - however, it is possible that if they conclude quickly that the case is unsound, they may order Cardinal Pell's immediate release and say that the full ruling will come later - that isn't an uncommon practice - keeping a man you've already decided is not guilty in prison for months, just because explaining all the complexities of a case is not really considered fair. So it is considered possible that the High Court will release Cardinal Pell this week if things have gone his way. But it is still a waiting game.

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