mo4ch:>Most senior Catholic to be convicted of child sex abuse WALKS FREE from jail after granted appeal in unanimous decision | Mo4ch News - Mo4ch News

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Tuesday, April 7, 2020

mo4ch:>Most senior Catholic to be convicted of child sex abuse WALKS FREE from jail after granted appeal in unanimous decision | Mo4ch News

Australia’s highest court has tossed conviction of Cardinal George Pell, found guilty of historic child sex crime and sentenced to 6 years in prison. The cardinal, former Vatican treasurer, was once a close aid to Pope Francis.

"The High Court found that the jury, acting rationally on the whole of the evidence, ought to have entertained a doubt as to the applicant's guilt with respect to each of the offences for which he was convicted, and ordered that the convictions be quashed and that verdicts of acquittal be entered in their place," a Queensland High Court said in a statement on Tuesday.

Pell was convicted by a jury in Australia of five counts of historic sex crimes in December, 2018. Pell, who is the most senior Vatican figure to ever be found guilty of the sexual abuse of a minor was sentenced to six years behind bars with a possibility of parole and has served 405 days out of his sentence before the groundbreaking verdict was overtuned unanimously on Tuesday.

The case against Pell was solely based on the testimony of one of his alleged victims - a former choirboy who said that the cardinal, then an archbishop of Melbourne, sexually abused him and another boy in late 1996 and early 1997.

Also on rt.com Vatican’s former 3rd most powerful man convicted of child sex abuse

Justifying their decision to set the cleric free, the seven-judge panel cited the accounts provided by “opportunity witnesses” who described the movements of the cardinal at the time of the reported crime - which allegedly took place during the Sunday mass - strikingly differently than the complainant. 

By ordering to release Pell from custody with immediate effect, the court overruled the decision by the Victorian Court of Appeal from August, 2019, which sided with the prosecution. Back then, Pell lost his case in a 2-1 split vote.  Referring to that case, the highest court argued that the appellate judges “failed to engage with the question of whether there remained a reasonable possibility that the offending had not taken place” while “leaving open the possibility” that the alleged victim’s account was correct.

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Source : RT - Daily news

Most senior Catholic to be convicted of child sex abuse WALKS FREE from jail after granted appeal in unanimous decision

Most senior Catholic to be convicted of child sex abuse WALKS FREE from jail after granted appeal in unanimous decision