Disgraced Cardinal George Pell, found guilty of raping two choirboys, has launched an appeal to overturn his conviction, while stating that the boys’ testimonies against him, in which they detail his forceful sexual abuse, are simply sexual “fantasy.”
As Cardinal Pell, 77, adjusts to life in prison, the video interview exposing the allegations of his sexual abuse against the two boys has been released for the first time.
According to Pell, who was convicted of five child sexual abuse charges in December, the boys created the detailed versions of events in which he forced them to perform sex acts on him as a “product of fantasy.”
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Cross-armed and shaking his head, he told Det Sgt Christopher Reed to “stop it” as he read a victim’s recollection of Pell trapping young boys in a room and exposing his genitals from beneath his ceremonial robes.
“What a load of absolute and disgraceful rubbish. Completely false. Madness,” he declared.
When the sexual acts he committed on the boys were described to him – as told to police in 2015 by the surviving victim a year after the death of the second victim – he again denied it.
The victim who testified at Pell’s trial said after the conviction was revealed that he still experiences “shame, loneliness, depression and struggle” decades after the sexual abuse. In his statement, the man said it had taken him years to understand the impact the assault had on his life.
Lawyer Lisa Flynn said the family of the second victim, who died of a heroin overdose in 2014 at the age of 31, is planning to sue the church or Pell individually once the appeal is resolved.
Cardinal George Pell is the most senior Catholic cleric ever charged with child sex abuse and is now facing up to 50 years in prison, dealing a new blow to Pope Francis and the Vatican’s credibility after a year of global revelations of abuse and cover-up.
Cardinal George Pell, Pope Francis’s top financial adviser and the Vatican’s treasurer, has been banned from conducting mass in public by Pope Francis as a result of the guilty finding.
