Pell’s lawyer says cardinal’s abuse of child was ‘plain vanilla sex’

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Former Vatican treasurer Cardinal George Pell is spending his first night behind bars on Wednesday after he was remanded into custody pending sentencing for sexually abusing two choir boys in Australia two decades ago.

Robert Richter, a lawyer representing Pell, tried to argue that Pell’s offences were at the low-end of the scale, at one point saying it was “no more than a plain vanilla sexual penetration case” where the child did not willingly take part, an argument quickly dismissed by the judge.

Pell, a former top adviser to Pope Francis and the most senior Catholic cleric to be convicted for child sex offences, was found guilty in December of five charges related to the abuse of the 13-year-old boys while he was Archbishop of Melbourne in the 1990s.

His guilty verdict was revealed in Australia on Tuesday after a court suppression order was dropped.

Each of the five offences of which Pell was found guilty carries a maximum 10 years imprisonment, and the judge outlined they were serious charges.

“This offending warrants immediate imprisonment,” prosecutor Mark Gibson told a packed courtroom, which was crowded to overflowing with journalists, lawyers and members of the public. “It involved two vulnerable boys.”

Two victim impact statements were tendered in the hearing; one from the victim who testified in Pell’s trial and one from the father of the other victim who died in 2014, but they were not made public.

Lawyers representing Pell argued for a lenient sentence, presenting Judge Peter Kidd with 10 character references, including one from former prime minister John Howard.

During the trial one victim described how Pell had exposed himself to him, fondled his genitals and masturbated, and forced one boy to perform a sex act on him. “I see this as a serious example of this kind of offending,” Judge Kidd told the Melbourne County Court. “There was an element of brutality to this assault.”
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Hmmm, remarks taken completely out of context and in no way resembling anything I’ve seen anywhere else, and from the Irish times. .

I’ll still reserve my judgment.
 
Yeah, taken out of context.
But Professor Gans, an expert on criminal appeals, said he was not at all surprised at the language used by Robert Richter.

He called it a “bog standard plea discussion”.

"One of the terrible tasks that everyone has to do in sentencing is to rank the crime against every other possible crime that someone is charged with," he said.
**> **
> "So if someone is charged with sexual penetration, you have to consider of all of the possible ways a child could be sexually penetrated and think — how does this rank in terms of seriousness.

“So that’s what the vanilla comment is.”
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I’m confused.

I thought that much of the defense had to do with how it didn’t happen at all. The victim testified about the vestments and the defense stated that specific vestment doesn’t open the way the boy explained.

Why bring up vanilla sex? That’s really ridiculous and disturbing. It’s a child victim. 😡
 
That is a very peculiar statement for a defense attorney to make if the client is innocent

This saddens me so much.

Lord have Mercy.
 
No, that is not true. The defense is admitting no such thing. It is using the standard ‘ranking’ in which, in discussion of penalties (and in no way implying or stating that the Cardinal actually DID the crime) for an accusation, it states that a given crime is either more or less serious on a scale and should be judged as such.

If you were on trial for murder, insisted on your innocence, were found guilty, and your lawyer to the judge commented that, “since the circumstances would place the crime as manslaughter, the penalty should be the same”, he wouldn’t be saying that you were guilty of manslaughter.
 
I see your point.

But still “vanilla” implies consensual contact. That’s not possible with a child. Very poor word choice for an attorney.
 
I actually deleted that post before you wrote, since I read more about the court process.

Regardless, this is still hugely damaging to Pell’s case and his defenders.

The lawyer himself has admitted that he should not have used the term vanilla sex to describe a horrific sex attack on a child, whether it happened or not.

See:

https://catholicherald.co.uk/news/2...l-as-his-lawyer-appears-to-concede-his-guilt/

Disaster for Pell as his lawyer appears to concede his guilt​

Cardinal Pell’s plans to appeal his conviction for rape have been thrown into confusion by an extraordinary statement from his own lawyer which describes the assault of which the cardinal was found guilty as a “plain vanilla sexual penetration case where the child is not actively participating”.

In the course of arguing that Pell did not deserve to be held in custody, Robert Richter QC gave the impression that he was conceding that Pell was guilty.

This was apparently not his intention: Richter was trying to argue that if Pell had committed the offence, which the cardinal strongly denies, then it was a lesser crime than other assaults against children.

The lawyer’s line of approach has thrown Pell’s supporters into despair. “I understand what Richter was trying to do. But he’s conceded the war to lose a battle,” said one source.

The latest developments are an extra disaster for Cardinal Pell, who was found guilty in December of five counts of sexual abuse of two 13-year-old boys.

Many commentators were astonished by the verdict, given the apparent holes and inconsistencies in the prosecution’s case. The defence thought it had demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that Pell could not possibly have committed those offenses. A previous jury had failed to reach a unanimous verdict, reportedly finding 10-2 in Pell’s favour.

One possible explanation for Richter’s bizarrely worded statement – which has caused widespread offence – is that he was trying to create grounds for appeal based on a future disproportionate sentence.

Whatever his reasons, his description of a horrific attack on a minor (which Richter was not conceding actually happened) will do nothing to persuade the Australian public of Pell’s innocence. The situation is therefore a nightmare for the Catholic Church. The former head of the Vatican’s finances has been found guilty of repugnant crimes against two children. Those many Catholics who believe that Pell is himself the victim of a terrible injustice will now find it much harder to argue their case.
 
I believe some of the defenses offered for Pell on this forum are related to affinity for his reputation as a conservative voice in the Church.
 
Daminging only insofar as people have obviously taken a statement completely out of context with the purpose of trying to make it look like Pell’s own lawyer is admitting his guilt, when nothing of the sort took place. That isn’t an error on the part of these papers. It is a deliberate and malicious attempt to paint the Cardinal as guilty by his own mouth before the appeal. The lawyer only erred in failing to realize how any sentence he utters will apparently be twisted to suit a narrative.
 
It was certainly an offensive and tone deaf thing for his lawyer to say (which even the lawyer now seems to realize), but it’s not at all an admission of guilt. The lawyer was trying to paint the charges Pell was convicted of as being less serious than other cases in order to gain a more lenient sentence.
 
The Fake News media organizations are now releasing “out of context” statements to make it appear Cardinal Pell is guilty.
 
No it doesn’t imply consent. He said “vanilla sexual penetration case”, vanilla referring to the case, not the sex. Remember he’s a lawyer and deals with cases every day.
 
Either way he acknowledged it was a really bad thing to say. I suppose after sentencing and appeal people who will never accept the verdict will claim his lawyer was incompetent.
 
My defense of Cardinal Pell is based purely on the impossibility of him being able to commit these crimes the way that they are described. For me the issue isn’t “Is he a conservative?” “Is he a liberal?” The question is “Did he do it?” And from what was described it is not humanly possible for him to have committed those crimes the way that the “victim” described. I think that it is a travesty of justice for the prosecutor to have brought it to this point.
 
“Vouthon said:

I think it’s important that everyone “blah-blahing” on this case read the description of what is alleged to have happened. A quote from this article:
The Supposed Facts of the Case

It is important for Catholics to know the specifics of the case, not just summary statements that it was “weak.” It was impossible.

The prosecution charged that Cardinal Pell, instead of greeting people after Mass, as was his custom, immediately left everyone in St. Patrick’s Cathedral and went unaccompanied to the sacristy. Arriving alone in the sacristy, he found two choirboys who had somehow left the procession of the other five dozen choirboys and were swigging altar wine.

Having caught them in the act, he then quickly decided to sexually assault them — “oral penetration,” to be unpleasantly precise.

This he accomplished immediately after Mass, with the sacristy door open, despite having all his vestments on and with the reasonable expectation that the sacristan, the master of ceremonies, the servers or concelebrants might come in and out or even pass by the open door, as would be customary after Mass.

Meanwhile, there were dozens and dozens of people in the cathedral, praying or milling about.
The whole affair took place within six minutes, after which the boys went off to choir practice and never spoke about it to anyone for 20 years, not even to each other. Indeed, one of the boys, who died of a heroin overdose in 2014, explicitly told his mother before he died that he had never been sexually abused.

The supposed facts are virtually impossible to complete. Ask any priest of a normal-sized parish — let alone a cathedral — if it would be possible to rape choirboys in the sacristy immediately after Mass. Sixty seconds — let alone six minutes — would not pass without someone, or several people, coming in and out, or at least passing by the open door. Ask any priest if he is customarily alone in the sacristy immediately after Mass, while there are still people in the church and the sanctuary has not yet been cleared.

Furthermore — again, with apologies for being graphic — it is not possible to perform the alleged penetration when fully vested for Mass. Again, ask any priest — let alone an archbishop, who is more heavily vested — about the awkwardness of having to visit the bathroom, if necessary, after vesting. It requires divesting, at least in part, or engaging in an awkward handling of the various vestments, which makes using the washroom difficult, to say nothing of a sexual assault.

The complainant said that Cardinal Pell had just moved his vestments aside, an impossibility, given that the alb has no such openings.

What Cardinal Pell was accused of doing is simply impossible, even if he had somehow been mad enough to attempt it.
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I really don’t know the context or what the lawyer actually meant, but I do know that even though Australians speak English, their linguistics are quite different from those in the typical western use of the language.
 
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