Anonymous ID: 23084b Feb. 27, 2019, 12:07 a.m. No.5412156   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>2284

John Howard gave Pell character reference

 

Former Australian prime minister John Howard has provided a character reference to a court for Cardinal George Pell, who has been convicted of child sex offences.

 

Pell was found guilty in December of orally raping a 13-year-old choirboy and molesting another after Sunday mass at St Patrick's Cathedral in East Melbourne in 1996.

 

The news of Pell's crimes sent shock waves across the globe on Tuesday and on Wednesday he faced a County Court pre-sentence hearing.

 

His lawyer Robert Richter QC submitted a binder of documents to the court in Pell's defence, including 10 positive character references.

 

"These people love him; none of them believe he is capable of these offences," Mr Richter said.

 

One of the testimonials is from Mr Howard, who became prime minister in 1996, the same year Pell committed his crimes.

 

https://www.thecourier.com.au/story/5927800/john-howard-gave-pell-character-reference/?cs=10229

Anonymous ID: 23084b Feb. 27, 2019, 1:13 a.m. No.5412556   🗄️.is 🔗kun

>>5412284

>>5412324

 

To add insult to injury his full claim was that it was a “plain vanilla sexual penetration case where the child is not actively participating”.

 

Quoted in the first paragraph of this article

 

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/feb/27/cardinal-pell-will-go-straight-to-jail-as-bail-application-is-withdrawn

 

Found this article from February 2018 about the barrister in question.

 

https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/cardinal-george-pells-barrister-loud-socially-progressive-and-avowed-atheist-20180205-h0tso9.html

 

>Over the next five days, the two men met regularly, mostly in the cardinal's official residence, a modest apartment just minutes from the Vatican. "It was a strange experience," says Richter, 71, who was raised Jewish but is an avowed atheist. "There was the church hierarchy, the daily routines, the nuns coming in to say 'Would you like a coffee?' " Pell would say Mass every morning, often by himself, during which he would be uncontactable. The two men developed a rapport: "Pell has a wry sense of humour when you get to know him." But, as Richter soon realised, the laying of charges was all but inevitable. "You're not going to have a taskforce set up and millions of dollars spent and nothing comes out of it."

 

Seems he's been attached to a number of high profile or notorious cases.

 

>If you happened to have planned a terrorist attack or stolen tens of millions of dollars or imported a boatload of cocaine, or, indeed, if you have been falsely accused of doing these things, then chances are that you would at some stage wind up on Richter's doorstep. Richter has defended some of Australia's most despised figures, including Julian Knight, the Australian Army officer cadet who killed seven and injured 19 in a mass shooting in Melbourne in 1987 that became known as the Hoddle Street massacre. He's also defended notorious Melbourne gangland figure Mick Gatto, and advocated for tax cheats and convicted paedophiles.