During his 13 months of solitary confinement, Cardinal George Pell almost lost hope of appealing his prison sentence but encouragement came from an unlikely source – the jail’s boss.
Pell, who died overnight in the Vatican at age 81, revealed this in his three-volume memoir Prison Journal, which recounts his experiences incarcerated in two Victorian jails before the High Court overturned his conviction for child sex offences in 2020.
After losing an appeal against his six-year conviction in the Victorian Supreme Court, Pell says he considered not appealing to the High Court despite always maintaining his innocence.
He explained fear judges would ‘simply close ranks’, and that he didn’t want to participate in an ‘expensive charade’.
Cardinal George Pell (pictured centre), who died overnight at age 81 in the Vatican, is lead from court to begin serving a six-month sentence for child sex abuse
However, he says the ‘boss’ of the Melbourne Assessment Prison – who was ‘a bigger man than I and a straight shooter’ – urged him to carry on seeking his appeal.
‘I was encouraged and remain grateful to him,’ he wrote.
Following his conviction in March 2019, Pell was forced to relinquish his church vestments for a green prison uniform tracksuit, although later in Barwon jail he was give a red one in recognition of his cardinal rank.
In the Melbourne jail, where he spent 10 months, Pell was placed in a solitary confinement cell on the same ward as 11 other inmates who he never saw – but certainly heard from down the corridor.
Pell (pictured centre front) arrives at County Court in Melbourne in 2016 as he was fighting the child sex charges that later saw him serve 13 months in jail before all the convictions were overturned by the High Court
‘I celled in the Toorak end, named for a rich Melbourne suburb, exactly the same as the noisy end but generally without bangers and shouters,’ he wrote.
The former Archbishop of Melbourne said he would ‘marvel at how long they could bang their fists, but a warder explained that they kicked with their feet like horses’.
‘Some flooded their cells or fouled them,’ he wrote.
‘Once in a while the dog squad was called, or someone had to be gassed. On my first night I thought I heard a woman crying; another prisoner was calling for his mother.’
As a convicted child sex offender Pell was separated from other prisoners for his safety but was personally confronted on one occasion.
The Melbourne Assessment Prison where Cardinal George Pell spent 10 months in solitary confinement
When exercising alone during one of his two half-hour periods allowed outside he was walking around a walled yard when he passed an opening at head-height.
‘Someone spat at me through the fly wire of the open aperture and began condemning me,’ Pell wrote.
‘It was a total surprise, so I returned furious to the window to confront my assailant and rebuke him.
‘He bolted from the front line out of my sight but continued to condemn me, as a “black spider” and other less-than-complimentary terms.’
After telling guards he would not go out in the yard again if the ‘young offender’ was next door, Pell was told the inmate had been moved for doing something ‘worse to another prisoner’.
During the almost 16 hour lockdowns in his spare cell, which only contained a shower, desk and bed, Pell said he heard other prisoners abusing him but also some ‘fierce’ arguments over whether he was guilty.
According to Pell one of the guards said the consensus among the ‘career criminals’ was that he had been ‘snitched up’.
The guard added ‘that it was odd that criminals could recognise the truth but not judges’, according to Pell.
Cardinal George Pell arrives at the Seminary Of The Good Shepherd in Sydney after the High Court acquitted him of the child sex abuse convictions that put him behind bars
‘Most of the warders in both prisons recognised I was innocent,’ Pell writes and he said even the guards who were hostile to him acted in a professional manner.
Although his faith in Australia’s criminal justice system was shaken Pell wrote his Christian belief was not during his confinement.
‘I never felt abandoned, knowing that the Lord was with me — even as I didn’t understand what he was doing for most of the 13 months,’ he wrote.
He even discovered some redeeming features of life inside despite the humiliations of being strip searched and even being denied the simple request of getting a broom to sweep his cell.
‘Prison life removed any excuse that I was too busy to pray, and my regular schedule of prayer sustained me,’ he wrote.
When he saw a former occupant has scrawled the word ‘home’ on the windowpane of his cell, he wondered if it is meant to be bitter lament.
‘I suspect not, as this is my home for the moment and it is not a terrible place,’ he wrote.
