A woman has told Melbourne magistrates court that her brother said a bishop had exposed himself to him while he was a choir boy and that the culprit was “fucking George Pell”.
She told the committal hearing into historical sexual offence charges against Cardinal Pell that her brother made the disclosure while they were drunk and in the back seat of a car on their way home from celebrating their grandmother’s eightieth birthday several years ago.
“[My brother] said: ‘You don’t know what’s happened to me. He exposed himself to me’,” the woman told the court. “I asked: ‘Who?’. He said: ‘Fucking George Pell’, were his exact words.”
Pell’s defence barrister, Robert Richter QC, accused the woman of making up the part about Pell being named by her brother. She denied making it up.
Her brother was crying when he made the disclosure, she said. When she raised the conversation with her brother again at a later date to see if he was okay, he refused to talk about it further, she said.
Richter pressed her on why she didn’t try to get more details about the allegation from her brother. “Do you care?,” he asked her.
“Of course I do,” she replied.
“I was very concerned about the allegation but I could see it was very embarrassing and hurtful for [him] ... I didn’t want to continue to probe him.”
She said her brother also told her in the car that what had happened to him “has fucked me up, you have no idea how much it has fucked me up”. Her brother went to police in 2015, the court heard.
Earlier on Friday, the court heard two men alleged Pell sexually offended against them while playing games with them as children at a swimming at a pool in Ballarat in the 1970s. One of the men also alleged he was sexually offended against in the pool change room.
The court also heard that a witness due to give evidence was medically unfit to do so, and therefore charges against Pell relating to him would be withdrawn.
Pell, who is 76, is the highest-ranking Vatican official to be charged in the Catholic church’s long-running sexual abuse scandal. He has taken leave from the Vatican in Rome to attend court. He has strenuously denied all allegations. Further description of the charges against Pell cannot be given for legal reasons.
When the hearing adjourns next Thursday afternoon, magistrate Belinda Wallington will decide if there is enough evidence to order Pell to stand trial accused of historical sexual offences. Her decision is expected some time in April.
The committal hearing continues.
