By Erya Hammett

Cardinal George Pell was a rapist and a paedophile. That is the story, the whole rotten truth, and no amount of incense or Latin hymns can scrub it clean.

The Federal Government's National Redress Scheme finally cut a cheque for two men chewed up by the past, both carrying scars left by George Pell. One of them, they said, was raped by Pell back when the Cardinal was just another young priest prowling Ballarat in the '70s—before the robes got fancier, and the sins got buried deeper.

Clock the timeline—the 1970s. That’s when the first shadows stretched long over Pell’s name. But the trial that ended up in the High Court? That was for crimes in the ‘90s, two decades down the line.

Twenty years is a long time for a man like that to walk free, plenty of nights for locked doors and muffled cries. I won’t spell it out for you. Just close your eyes and let the nightmares do the rest.

Pell was free to commit abuses because the kind of men who light candles in back rooms and shake hands in the dark—men with power, men with friends in high places—too many of these men were not about to let that truth see daylight without a fight.

And too many of the others simply couldn't fathom the truth about a man many considered a friend, or at least a fellow traveller.

The church was his first line of defense, a fortress of stone and silence. The second? A chorus of conservative politicians and conservative media figures, swearing he was the victim here, not the kids left with scars they couldn’t pray away. They called it a witch hunt, a modern-day crucifixion.

But what it really was, was politics. They were more concerned with "owning the libs" than determining if a powerful priest whom a Royal Commission had already established had protected paedophiles, was a rapist and a paedophile himself. Yes, says the Tribunal, he was a rapist. Yes, says the Tribunal, he was a paedophile.

But the only cross Pell carried was the one he cowered behind.

The Case Against Pell

It started like these stories always do—too late for justice, but just in time for scandal.

In 2018, the law finally caught up with Pell, hauling him before a jury for molesting two choirboys in the ‘90s. The evidence was enough to put him away for six years, enough to make the Vatican sweat through their silk robes. But Pell wasn’t just another priest with a taste for the unforgivable—he was the Vatican’s finance chief, and a serious player in Vatican politics.

The High Court overturned the conviction in 2020, claiming the evidence didn’t cut deep enough. The system, greased and polished as it was, provided enough loopholes for a man like him to slip through.

But the sins of the past don’t stay buried forever. The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse had already established the culpability of the Catholic Church. It dug up the skeletons, one after another, laying them out like corpses in a morgue. Pell knew. That was the damning conclusion. He knew about the priests who preyed on children in Ballarat and Melbourne, and he did nothing. Nothing except protect the church’s reputation, the one thing more sacred than its own God.

Then came the redress scheme. Two men from Ballarat, both chewed up by the past, finally got their recognition: Pell had abused them in the 1970s. One in a school gym, the other in a swimming pool. The system called it "reasonably likely." The victims just called it the truth.

The Pinstriped Defenders

Pell had friends.

John Howard, the former Prime Minister, didn’t just back Pell—he gave him a character reference during his trial. We can't know John Howard's heart, but he almost certainly believed Pell innocent.

His signature on that character reference however, binds John Howard to Pell forever, raising questions about Howard's judgement in the minds of many. That may seem unfair. After all, it's not like Pell ever threw children overboard, he only raped them.

Tony Abbott also believed Pell innocent. He went even further. He called Pell’s ordeal a "modern-day crucifixion."

Maybe he thought the cardinal was carrying the sins of the whole church on his back, after all he described Pell "a scapegoat for the church itself."

But Pell wasn’t bleeding for anyone but himself.

And then there was Peter Dutton, the man with the coldest stare in Australian politics. He showed up at Pell’s funeral, all stiff shoulders and righteousness, and spoke of a great injustice. He meant Pell, not the child the Tribunal subsequently found Pell had raped.

The System That Fails

Pell’s case was a showcase of how powerful institutions care of their own. The Catholic Church had spent decades silencing victims, moving abusers around like chess pieces, making sure their secrets stayed buried under cathedral floors.

When the Royal Commission laid out the truth, it wasn’t a revelation. It was just proof of what everyone already knew. The church didn’t protect children. It protected itself.

Most damning, the Royal Commission laid it out in cold numbers—seven percent of the country’s Catholic priests weren’t just men of God, they were predators in collars. From 1950 to 2010, they prowled the pews, turning churches into hunting grounds, while the higher-ups lit candles and looked the other way. Some probably still prowl those pews. Some probably still protect them.

The justice system wasn’t much better. Pell walked free, his conviction overturned in the High Court because doubt had been weaponised in his favor. Victims of clergy abuse didn’t get that kind of luxury. They got cross-examined, discredited, left to drown in their own pain while the men in red robes poured another drink and slept easy.

Faith, Power, and the Price of Silence

To the conservative media barkers who stood by Pell, this was never about justice. It was about the culture war, about defending their institutions, their version of morality, their grip on power.

To them, Pell wasn’t just a man. He was their man, and he was a symbol. Admitting he was guilty meant admitting that their world—of church, state, and unquestioned authority—was crumbling.

So they called the survivors liars. They blamed rival media outlets. They said the accusations were just a leftist plot, another way to tear down tradition. Anything to keep the truth at bay, to keep the past wrapped up in a clerical collar, locked behind stained glass.

The Reckoning

Pell escaped earthly justice. The High Court which unanimously overturned the unanimous decision of the jury in Pell's criminal trial saw to that. That's how our system works. Howard, Abbott and Dutton are right, Pell is forever innocent in the eyes of the law — Of course that's the same legal system that failed those innocent young boys the National Redress Sceheme says Pell sexually molested and raped 20 years earlier.

But the faith he clung to so tightly has another tribunal waiting.

If Pell was right and hell is real then there is a special place reserved for men like him—somewhere past the choir stalls, past the confession booths, past the pearly gates he’d never see.

And there, in the flickering dark, the prayers of the forgotten will finally be heard, as will the tortured, never ending lamentations of the corrupted soul of a paedophile named Cardinal George Pell.

Want to Learn more? My sources are your sources (except for the confidential ones): ABC, BBC, Guardian, The Australian, Royal Commision into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, The Monthly, AFR, Reuters, Law Society Journal, NPR, Vatican News, CNN, Guardian, Independent Australia and Corker Binning