George Pell's lawyer, Robert Richter QC, said: 'The offences were "no more than a plain vanilla sexual penetration case where the child is not volunteering or actively participating'
Robert said this in February 2019, after the time that Pell had already been found guilty by the jury on the 11th of December 2018. The timing is important to note, otherwise one might mistakenly regard it as an admission of guilt.
Robert's choice of words are his own and obviously his strategy was to seek leniency by softening the description of the incident. Lawyers take such approaches once they believe their client will be sentenced - their objective is to reduce the sentence as much as possible.
Robert apologised soon after: "In seeking to mitigate sentence I used a wholly inappropriate phrase for which I apologise profusely to all who interpreted it in a way it was never intended: it was in no way meant to belittle or minimise the suffering and hurt of victims of sex abuse, and in retrospect I can see why it caused great offence to many."
However, ultimately his desperate tactic based on the presumption of guilt was unnecessary as further exploration of the case lead the High Court to quash the convictions.
