Cardinal George Pell has filed for special leave to appeal against his child sex convictions to the High Court of Australia.
The disgraced Cardinal was returned to custody on August 21 after two of three Court of Appeal judges backed a jury decision to convict him of the sexual abuse of two choirboys.
A challenge to the High Court is the 78-year-old’s last avenue of appeal.
Pell was found guilty in December of orally raping a 13-year-old choirboy and sexually assaulting another 13-year-old boy, grabbing his genitalia in a hallway, at St Patrick’s Cathedral in Melbourne in 1996.
Cardinal George Pell (pictured after losing his appeal last month) has filed for special leave to appeal his child sex abuse convictions to the High Court of Australia
Pell (court sketch from his appearance at Court of Appeal in August) was returned to custody on August 21 after two of three Court of Appeal judges backed a jury decision to convict him of the sexual abuse of two choirboys
Only one victim was able to testify against Pell. The other died of a heroin overdose in 2014 and never reported the alleged abuse.
The man who testified said he felt ‘a responsibility to come forward’ after the second man’s funeral.
‘I knew he had been in a dark place. I was in a dark place,’ he said in a statement released following the appeal.
‘I gave a statement to the police because I was thinking of him and his family. I felt I should say what I saw and what happened to me.
‘I had experienced something terrible as a child, something that marked my life. I wanted at least some good to come of it.’
After his trial, the Cardinal was sentenced to six years with a non-parole period of three years and eight months.
Pell, 78, and his legal team had until Wednesday to file an application to the High Court, which on Tuesday confirmed it had received the application through its Melbourne registry.
The matter will be considered by a panel and either dismissed or the parties will be called to a brief hearing for further consideration.
The process can be lengthy, with the special leave application process taking anywhere up to six months.
If successful seeking leave, Pell’s lawyers will then lodge a full appeal with the High Court.
The disgraced Cardinal was sentenced to six years with a non-parole period of three years and eight months
The High Court only hears a very small proportion of the cases petitioned to it – only accepting 65 of 430 cases in 2017-18.
Pell is the highest ranking member of the Catholic Church to be convicted of sex abuse, and continues to maintain his innocence.
The denial of Cardinal Pell’s appeal was decided by the chief justice of the Supreme Court of Victoria, Justice Anne Ferguson, president of the Court of Appeal Justice Chris Maxwell, and Justice Mark Weinberg.
Justices Ferguson and Maxwell both voted to uphold the conviction, while Justice Weinberg voted to partly grant Pell’s appeal.
It took them nine weeks to release their decision, which spanned 324 pages.
Justice Ferguson read out the reasons for the court’s decision, both those of the majority and dissenting justice Weinberg.
‘Cardinal Pell’s case was that the complainant’s account was a fabrication or a fantasy that it was implausible and that in any event, the evidence of the opportunity witnesses, taken as a whole, combined to make the complainant’s account either literally impossible or so unlikely, it’s of no realistic possibility,’ she said.
Justice Ferguson said when the unreasonableness ground is relied upon, the appeal court reviews the evidence as it was presented to the jury.
The appeal court asks itself whether it was ‘reasonably open to the jury’ to convict the accused.
‘It is not enough that the jury might have had a doubt, but they must have had a doubt,’ she said.
Pell (pictured in June) is the highest ranking member of the Catholic Church to be convicted of sex abuse, and continues to maintain his innocence
‘This was a compelling witness, clearly not a liar, not a fantasist and was a witness of truth.
‘We decided that there was nothing about the complainant’s evidence or about the opportunity evidence which meant that the jury must have had a doubt about the truth of the complainant’s account.
‘We did not experience a doubt.
‘Throughout his evidence, the complainant came across as someone who was telling the truth. He did not seek to embellish his evidence or tailor it in a manner favourable to the prosecution.’
The pair noted some inconsistencies between witness accounts, but decided this was due to the passage of time.
On the other side, Justice Weinberg concluded the victim’s evidence ‘contained discrepancies, displayed inadequacies’ so as to cause him to have a doubt as to the applicant’s guilt.
‘He could not exclude as a reasonable possibility that some of what the complainant said was concocted, particularly in relation to the second incident,’ Justice Ferguson explained.
‘Justice Weinberg found that the complainant’s account of the second incident was entirely implausible and quite unconvincing.’
The dissenting justice said if the victim was the only one giving evidence about the first crime, he would have found it difficult to say the jury convicted unreasonably.
Daily Mail Australia has contacted Pell’s lawyers for comment.