CARDINAL PELL’S WOES CONTINUE.

Context is important, indeed essential. Richter called “vanilla” the allegations as they were detailed. Since the plea he entered for Pell was not guilty he was hardly accepting that they had actually occurred! He was saying that the allegations as made were of a certain type and should be dealt with in a the appropriate way.
Since the jury returned a guilty verdict (to the evident shock of the judge as seen by those in court at the time) the judge was obliged to pronounce judgment on the basis that the crimes had occurred as alleged. So his language reflects that.
A British academic, Dr Chris Friels, has written many papers which shred the allegations against Pell, showing them to be physically impossible, as well as highlighting serious problems with the police investigation. Victoria Police is historically a chronically corrupt police force, and recent scandals make clear little has changed.
Fr Frank Brennan SJ, a liberal Catholic with strong social justice activity, and who had clashed in the past with Pell, has written a book detailing how the case against Pell was a travesty of justice. Fr Brennan is a fully trained lawyer, and the son of a former Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia.
That an allegation is made does not mean it is true. We may not like Pell, and many here do not like the Catholic Church, but false allegations must be exposed, if only for the sake of those who truly have been abused. Injustice endangers justice for them.

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‘Richter said he was in a difficult position because he could only propose a sentence based on the jury’s finding of guilt, not on the basis that Pell maintained his innocence. He said Pell did not have a pattern of offending and had not planned the attack, and so would have been “seized by some irresistible impulse”.’

In fact the minority opinion at the first appeal demonstrated the impossibility of Pell’s guilt (in a brief of 200 pages or so, showing up the shoddiness of the two other judges’ reports), which is why the guilty verdict was unanimously overturned by the higher court.

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3.02
The first sentence of this quotation affirms my opinion of Richter, which was expressed in my post at 2.41: that he at least suspected Pell was guilty of the offences, and, therefore, sought to have the judge direct that the matter be handled not in a court of law, but less formally, so that Pell might not receive a prison sentence if convicted. Why else would Richter have stated that he, upon a guilty verdict for Pell, could suggest a sentence for his client based only on the jury’s finding rather than on any continued declaration of innocence by Pell himself? In such an event, Richter would have demonstrated, both to the court and to the watching world, that he had never, really, believed in his client’s innocence.
As for Pell’s allegedly having no pattern of such offending, there certainly were no criminal convictions against him, but there WERE other such allegations, including one from an indoor pool attendant who said that he caught Pell as he exposed his genitals to young boys in a changing area and warned him, after the boys had been sent home, that the police would be called if ever he returned.
The minority opinon in the Court of Appeal demonstrated that the allegations were false to no one but himself: both his colleagues were persuaded otherwise, and the Court upheld the conviction. Your inference here is biased and misleading.
You have demonstated, by your comment, not rigourous, incisive intellectual analysis, but a clear prejudice in favour of George Pell. I can see only one reason for this: that George Pell is a Roman Catholic priest, and a high-ranking prelate within the Roman Catholic Church.

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