There was the same roiling media maul that once regularly greeted George Pell for his pre-trial hearings, those held last year across the road in the Melbourne Magistrates courts when it was being decided whether the cardinal even had a case to answer.
Pell was now a convicted criminal, found guilty by a jury of sexual offences against choirboys 22 years ago. His shuffle from the roadside, Lonsdale Street, to the glass-walled County Court, walking stick in hand, through the lines of police, cameras whirring all around and a great crowd jostling just to see him, was now what is known in the crime novels as a ‘‘perp walk’’.There were those in the crowd who fantasised, out loud, that they’d soon see this man of the church in handcuffs.
One count of sexual penetration of a child under 16 and four of committing an indecent act with or in the presence of a child under 16. Each carrying a potential maximum sentence of 10 years in prison. Pell sat alone at the very rear of the court. The dock.Pell had aged visibly over the past months. Gravity seemed to have been at work. The stoop of the body was almost now resolving to the shape of a hump. The hair, grey for years, was thinner, the scalp more visible.
A ‘big man’ in stature but not in morality, truthfulness, integrity or empathy.
It is almost accomplished
It’s amazing how quickly these princes of the church age when they appear in court. Wheelchairs, oxygen bottles, walking canes. Like aged mafia dons
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