Cardinal George Pell, found guilty of raping 13-year-old boys while he was an Archbishop, has described his sexual abuse of children as “plain vanilla sex.”
Despite acknowledging the 13-year-old boys did not “volunteer” to have sex, nor were they “actively participating,” Cardinal Pell’s defense appealed for a lenient sentence by arguing that an Archbishop having sex with 13-year-old boys, against their will, is “on the low end of offending.”
Cardinal George Pell, the most senior Catholic cleric ever convicted of child sexual abuse, was found guilty in December of sexually penetrating one choirboy and molesting another while he was Archbishop of Melbourne, but the verdict was not made public until yesterday.
But Robert Richter, one of Pell’s defense lawyers, drew gasps of disbelief from the court room when he attempted to convince the judge that his client’s crimes were “on the low end of offending”, describing them as “no more than a plain vanilla sexual penetration case where a child is not volunteering or actively participating”.
However Cardinal Pell’s shocking defense was immediately shut down by chief judge Peter Kidd, who described Pell’s sex crimes as “brutal” and made it clear that he views the former Vatican treasurer as a brazen pedophile.
“At the moment, I see this as callous, brazen offending. Blatant,” Judge Kidd said. “There was an element of brutality to this assault.”
Cardinal Pell’s defense also tried to claim that an incident in which Pell grabbed one of the boys by the genitals in an attack that lasted seconds was “fleeting” and therefore not worthy of a prison sentence.
Chrissie Foster, the mother of two girls abused by a Catholic priest, was in court when Pell’s defense lawyer made the comments and she called the remarks “outrageous“.
“How can they say that? These are children, they were children, two of my children were treated to such rape,” Ms Foster said, speaking outside court.
The details of the high-profile child sex case emerged this week after a court order banning reporting of the trial was lifted.
During the trial, one victim described how the former Archbishop sexually assaulted him and other boys, exposing his genitals to them, masturbating in front of them, and forcing them to perform oral sex on him.
Each of the five offences for which the 77-year-old was found guilty carries a maximum 10 years imprisonment. The judge outlined they were serious charges and Pell is expected to receive a lengthy prison sentence.
Pell was back in court on Wednesday for his sentence plea hearing, during which his defense lawyer attempted to describe his child sex crimes as “vanilla sex”. His bail was revoked and he was taken to prison ahead of his final sentence being handed down on 13 March.