George Pell sex files: police sought advice from prosecutors
The Australian 12:00am July 28, 2016
Tessa Akerman
Victorian prosecutors were asked by police to review sex abuse claims against Cardinal George Pell but sent the file back to detectives without recommendations.
The police file was sent to the Victorian Office of Public Prosecutions in the past month but was returned by director John Champion, who advised officers any decision on charges was their call, the Herald Sun reported last night. The revelation came after the ABC broadcast statements from two men last night accusing Australia’s most senior Catholic of abusing them as boys.
Cardinal Pell, who wrote to Victoria Police in May asking if they wanted to interview him, hit back immediately. “The accusations are sheer fantasy and completely implausible,’’ he told The Australian from Rome.
It was reported in February that Victoria Police’s Sano Taskforce was investigating Cardinal Pell over allegations spanning from his time as a priest in Bal¬larat in the 1970s to his time as archbishop of Melbourne in the 1990s, allegations which he has strongly denied.
Cardinal Pell called for an ¬investigation into the leaks at the time and claimed they was designed to cause damage to the Catholic Church and to him just a week before he was to give evidence to the child sex abuse royal commission in February.
Last night ABC’s 7.30 reported the claims that Victorian police were investigating multiple allegations of child sex abuse by the cardinal dating back to the 1970s. Two former St Alipius students, Lyndon Monument and Damian Dignan, told the program that Cardinal Pell would abuse boys at the Eureka swimming pool in Ballarat.
Mr Monument claimed that in the summer of 1978-79, the then episcopal vicar for education began touching him with one hand under the water. “The hand on my crotch would cover my penis and testicles and would cover my anus area,” he said. “Father Pell would throw me into the air and I would dive into the water.”
Mr Dignan claimed the-then Father Pell would grab the boys around the testicles and anus.
The 7.30 program also reported allegations that Cardinal Pell abused two teenage choirboys in the 1990s. It was reported one of the boys died two years ago and the other was working with Sano Taskforce detectives.
Sano Taskforce was established to investigate historic and new allegations emanating from the Victorian parliamentary ¬inquiry into child sex abuse ¬involving religious and non-government organisations.
An associate of Cardinal Pell said the cardinal wrote to Victorian police in May asking if they wanted to interview him.
The associate said police replied last month, saying they did not require an interview.
Victorian police and the Office of Public Prosecutions declined to comment last night.