It’s not quite the madness you might have expected. At the directions hearing, back in July 2017, I had arrived to see a great snaking line of people who had started arriving at dawn — and his arrival was a state of frenzied bedlam. All that had been for a 10-minute hearing; you’d think the actual sentencing of the highest ranking Catholic to ever be convicted of child sex offences would be several magnitudes more crowded. But it’s not.
Of course, the bank of cameras are here as I rock up a bit after 8am: presenters for Sky, Ten, Today, rehearsing their lines, behind them a cohort of middle-aged women in navy blue, wearing several badges — some from Care Leavers Australiasia Network (CLAN) — and holding signs and moving them so the ABC can get them into the background of their shot. To the right, a little coffee stall, which must have expected to do a more roaring trade that it currently is.
Then there’s the derealisation of it all: the make-up that’s meant to look normal under lights on TV, the familiar newsreader rhythm stopping and starting in front of cameras that aren’t on. Events like Pell’s trial always look more normal, more real, on TV. In fact, Pell’s trial has occupied this unreal position more than most major stories. Apart from the unprecedented magnitude of the conviction, it was a media circus no one could really report, occupying some parallel universe that was alluded to by those in the know, but that couldn’t be directly referred to. Now, a coterie of high-profile journos are here for the circus — Shannon Deery, Tony Wright, Lucie Morris-Marr, BuzzFeed’s Lane Sainty. Sarah Ferguson chats to Louise Milligan.
The sentencing is broadcast live, a minor concession, perhaps, to the strained relationship between the media and the judiciary. Pell’s case had become flashpoint around the long simmering arguments around access to information in the Victorian court system and the use of suppression orders. Journalists who had turned up every day to cover the case couldn’t tell their readers what a Google search or a US-based relative could. That was, until last month, when the second trial against Pell fell apart and the suppression orders were lifted. And now, a live broadcast of the sentencing, in the interests of “transparency and an accessible communication of the work of the court”.
At around 9am, the vibe begins to resemble an airport lounge, with people beginning to shuffle into lines, which eventually swell and spill out onto the stairs leading up to the courtroom. People surreptitiously curl around the edges of the tightening knot at the door, casually attempting to get a better spot without showing it. Still, it’s all convivial and relaxed.
We eventually do the public-transport shuffle in through the single door. The place is full — all rows of chairs in the gallery are taken, and there is a little L shape of people standing at the back corner, but again, it’s not madness.
And then, after a long wait, during which the speed date small talk (“Who are you here with? How long have you been there?”) withers to an indistinct hum, four or five uniformed police officers enter at the back of the room, and from a door wedged into the rear corner where the dock is located, he silently lumbers in, and the whole air of unreality ramps up — now beyond surreal — as an entire room turns in their chairs, takes a breath, and looks at him, silent and still as a painting.
Justice Peter Kidd gives fulsome remarks around his sentencing, noting the unique context in which Pell has been tried. His remarks are measured, but a straight report doesn’t quite give a sense of the surreal way it veers from sympathy to unequivocal condemnation. With breathtaking coolness, Kidd observes “It’s a matter of speculation how long you have left, but you may not live to be released from jail… “
Kidd’s remarks also address the recurring conservative argument — why would an ambitious and intelligent man like Pell commit such a brazen act. He described Pell’s attack as “breathtakingly arrogant”, saying Pell’s authority as the archbishop at the time may have led him to the conclusion that he could handle whatever happened if someone had walked in.
And all the while Pell sits at the back of the court, betraying no flicker of anything. Even as Kidd recounts, in moment-by-moment detail, what he did to two children, all those years ago, nothing. There is no equivocation, no allegedly — not now. Pell, as these details are listed, just peers silently forward, looking no more perturbed or engaged than a grandfather half watching a game show after lunch.
Much more emotion is shown by the survivor group representatives. As Kidd talks, a thin wiry man in navy blue, a shock of white hair bristling from his lined, darkened face, squeezes his haunted eyes shut, and hunches forward in his chair. Like all the survivors of child abuse here, one can’t help but be moved by the awful double wounding a day like today must represent. They have to be here, they have to witness with their own eyes the proof that now, no level of privilege will save you from the consequences of this crime. And yet, hearing these stories must be unbearable.
And then Kidd sentences Pell to a total of six years (he’ll be 81 by the time he’s eligible for parole), and we all turn and watch silently as the judge’s assistant brings him the paperwork that, upon his signature, registers him as a sex offender. And we all silently watch, and the unreality is sucked out of the room like it was an airlock, and you remember what you’re watching. And the police take him away.
As we shuffle out, I pass the court sketch artist and see on the chair beside her the first draft of her rendering of Pell — and in that colourful, defined picture, he looks more like the figure we recognise. Of course, once the inevitable appeal is filed, the story will return to unreality.
What a sad, sorry business this all is. As in war, no matter how it ends, no-one will have won.
I don’t wish to defend Pell. He personifies so much of what I dislike about religion. Nor can I form an opinion on the validity or otherwise of the conviction: I was never in the courtroom. It is not my place to comment on the proceedings. One thing continues to nag at me, though.
Given how ‘brazen’ these acts were, given the hubris, then surely they weren’t the only ones?
So … where are the others?
There is a lawsuit lodged in the Victorian Supreme Court against Pell by another man who claims to be a victim in the 1970s (and with alleged witnesses).
Perhaps other victims have been holding back to see what transpires in today’s case…& now the appeal. Bearing in mind those in the media which proclaim Pell’s innocence (thereby, by implication, damning the victim as a liar) it requires a brave person to volunteer for such derision & punishment. Any survivors tend to be fragile even decades later, they simply may not be up to it.
To zut alors, isn’t the lawsuit from a person claiming to be a victim from the 1970’s, about “John Hopoate” incidents in the pool? The prosecutor decided not to run with this material.
While I proclaim Pell’s innocence, I do not by implication damn the accuser as a liar – he may simply be deluded.
How many of his victims might have already taken their own lives, do you think? Suicide & drug abuse rates are frequently much higher amongst victims of child sex abuse.
They’re most likely around Graeski. Assuming they are, they’ve survived this long by keeping their head down, keeping their anger in check and trying to get on with their lives.
It’s not the worst way to deal with it. Don’t think their unwillingness to perform the justice tango means they don’t exist. I an think of a thousand reasons not to go through with it.
Agree, the real, unreported to authority figures, for all sexual abuse victims, as collated by, counseling bodies is much higher than even the estimated non- reported by legal agencies. and yes their method of just getting on with their lives is a totally valid option.
Sorry GF50, I’m trying t address Graeski’s observations..
I couldn’t agree with you more Dog’s Breakfast.. Why do people think that a very small percentage of rape cases make it to court, for the very same reason’s, it is often far to traumatic to go through the judicial process…
Yes that is always the question, GF50…
Often with this type of crime the victims can either become part of the statistics in the high level of suicides or drug/alcohol addiction. (within this group of people) sometimes even prostitution, as they need to find a way of dealing with their pain, or they go onto lead very painful & difficult lives, their close relationships can often be marred with mental health issues, those that do go on to lead relatively reasonable lives, don’t want their past’s being dredged up to be re-traumatised again, they may have only just made some sort of peace with their experience.
The biggest problem & the stories I’ve heard, are often around the fact that they’ve gone home & haven’t been believed by their parents, which probably automatically puts them in a situation where if their parents don’t believe them, what authority figure will believe them.
This is a large part of the problem around what has happened to them, if they’re going to be believed, how to do they deal with the fact that they then have to go through a trial which no matter what they do is still always traumatic, (it’s along the same lines as a rape trial), which no one wants to go through, let alone for something that they only have small snapshots of muddled or inconsistent memories..
We always need to keep in mind these were young children who lived in a different time & didn’t/don’t understand what was happening to them at the time, until the stories started to become public..
There’s also a major difference with children of that era, which was the fact these people are not only authority figures in their lives but also those of their families, but also if the Catholic priest, minister whatever said not to tell anybody, well they thought that this person could make them pay for telling others what was happening to them..
They didn’t understand that these men weren’t & shouldn’t have had that sort of access to them in the first place, but people were more trusting I would suggest in those days with a tendency to be more inclined to take a priest at his word in place of what their own child was saying, also the relatives/parents were often too disbelieving or in denial that their priest would ”ever do that to a child.”
It’s also clear in the research that has been done, that young males tend to struggle with this type of sexual predatory behaviour & being so young at the time they would feel shame & guilt because they must have done something to bring it upon themselves, along with families that wouldn’t or couldn’t stop or prevent it from happening, these poor kid’s/people were caught between a rock & a hard place, being young children would have meant they were vulnerable & in a tragically awful place…
Thankfully things have changed but children need to be taught from a young age they are their own self advocates & if they say No they mean it, that no one has access to their body’s & that they have complete self autonomy.. When they say No they mean No…
But what if they say yes?
Sixty suicides connected to the Ballarat church.. ten in the last year..
Justice Kidd was straightforward and clear. The cameras in the court room focussed soley on him presumably for good reason. Whoever was responsible at the ABC for directing the split screen while he was speaking to show a man outside the court with his head in his hands should be given a job at 60 Minutes.
The split screen was inappropriate & insensitive. At that point I ditched the ABC & switched to the Ten Network’s live coverage.
My take on the guy with his head in his hands is that he is best explained as a paid noticeboard for the coming lawyer’s picnic. Even his family name, Advocate, sounds made up to me.
George Pell gets a “vanilla” sentence.
What a thoughtful and considered description of the event. I watched the broadcast and you have captured the solemnity and the surreality of the whole event without diminishing the awfulness of the act and the suffering of the victims
I just wish that the apologists for Pell would acknowledge that they have not heard all of the evidence that the jury did, and give the jury the benefit of the doubt. If any of them have been on a jury, they will recognise that the duty is not undertaken lightly, the deliberations are intense and the jurists take their oath very, very seriously indeed!
No jury decision is made without serious deliberation of the options, and Bolt, Devine, Abbott et al have no idea what the jury heard.
As the NSW Nationals leader said to his federal counterparts … “Shut Up!”
John, Is that why the first Jury which heard the live evidence of the complainant over 2-3 days with cross examination could NOT reach a verdict?
If the live evidence of the complainant in person did not convince 12 good men and women taking their job seriously – what pray tell would??