Australia's highest ranking Catholic man, who rose to be the Vatican's third most powerful cleric, had been convicted of sexual crimes against 2 13 year old boys.

Ah, a jury of 12 had found George Pell guilty of five shocking offenses which all took place inside since Patrick's Cathedral when Pel was archbishop of Melbourne.

A suppression order banning publication of those convictions was lifted last week after the crown decided to drop a second trial against the cardinal on separate charges.

He was a man that was so high up in the hierarchy that he believed he was untouchable.

But we believe that justice will be served, that we're just wasting our time and effort with credibility of the institutional church is at an all time life and this is what is so devastating about this conviction.

It just makes it worse.

Watching his progression and climbing within the Catholic Church, he's nine, was regularly within the press and every time Pell's nine was a very clear recollection of what he'd been up to and what Yeah, but you're just a dirty, rotten, sneaky conniving.

I've been following this case for three years since I first met a group of men who broke decades of silence to reveal allegations of how the innocence was stolen by Cardinal George Pell when they were young boys tonight on Four Corners, the inside story of how a prince of the church was brought to justice.

It was 1996 and George Pell was the newly installed archbishop of Melbourne.

The church was grappling with an escalating scandal over clergy sexual abuse of Children, and the Archdiocese of Melbourne had Maur pedophile priests than anywhere else in the country.

Archbishop George Pell was in damage control.

One or two lonely voices have suggested that the Catholic Church here is in a state of crisis.

They are badly mistaken thanks.

In October 1996 Pel launched the Melbourne Response, the church's new strategy for dealing with sexual abuse victims.

But I do want to stress that this is a genuine attempt tow lesson, the sufferings off the victims and the lesson, the sufferings of their families.

I'm hopeful that with further improvements and refinements over time, these initiatives will go a long way towards addressing this sad and deeply regrettable issue.

This was the public face of George Pell.

But only a few months after that press conference, we now know that the archbishop was doing exactly what his game was set up to address.

Sexually abusing Children.

These was the case put by the crown as your honor pleases members of the jury it's alleged in this case.

But on a Sunday morning in the latter part of 1996 Archbishop George Pell, as he was then known, was saying 11 a.m. Mass at ST Patrick's Cathedral here in East Melbourne.

As was customary during Sunday Mass.

Listen, Patrick's Cathedral Church choir was singing, accompanied by an organist.

There were 61 boys in the choir, about half of them with sopranos sopranos were what the younger Children.

And then there was the altos, which is when your voice starts to break.

Then you turn into a tenant base.

Hi, you're up.

We get you look after the little boys.

You look after him and you sort of they're only little kids.

You gotta show him a bit of a disciplined.

I don't do that, Do this.

But then today you're still a child yourself, but you should always and I help him out.

Look after him.

The choirboys were all on scholarships to attend the nearby since Kevin's College in wealthy Turek.

Andrew McGregor was one of the older boys in the choir.

It was a big deal.

It was a big deal.

And for Northern Boy to sort of go all the way to tour act fools, prestige.

And it was quite an achievement that your parents were proud of you.

You were proud off and to say that I went to school at ST Kevin's, which is a press stage school, lots of opportunities.

Hey, says George Pell was often there when the boys practiced.

It was just George Power, the archbishop, the priests that leaves at the church.

He came to visit us.

We didn't know if he lived their lives somewhere else.

But we just assumed, because it's the archbishop, he lives at the church.

I used to be around listening to the choir coming past the silos.

I thank you before of it as a mark of respect that he used to take notice of us.

On the day of the incident, the choir had just finished singing and filed out of ST Patrick's in Procession.

You're singing.

The mess is finished.

Everyone still standing around just watching you sing, and then Iran collapse.

Soon as the Carol's finished and it's it's like playing a game of football, and you scored the winning goal.

Everyone just clapping and cheering you on.

It was a sense off achievement, sense of gratitude.

Two of the boys left the rest of the group.

Both boys took the opportunity to have some fun to be naughty, mischievous kids.

They slipped away from the procession once the precision was outside the cathedral and away from the public gaze.

Once inside the cathedral, this is after Mass.

They then entered an unlocked door and walked down a corridor that led down to the sacristy.

It's a big church is lots of space.

Anyone can get lost.

This 60 hits, and there was never if someone was missing, you wouldn't be able to tell because everyone would just hurry up, get changed.

Let's go home with Two boys were swigging from the altar wine when George Pell caught them in the act pill.

Asked the boys, What are you doing here?

And told them that they were in trouble.

Pill approached the two boys.

He then proceeded to maneuver his robes so as to pull out his Penis.

He pulled the first boy aside and had him crouched in front of him.

Pill was standing, but this time the boy asked to be let go, as they hadn't done anything wrong.

Pel had his hand on the back of the boy's head and his other hand at his own genital area.

The other boys saw the first boy's head being lowered towards the genital area of Pel.

When he'd finished with the first boy, George Pell moved on to the second.

It's alleged that Pel was standing and he pushed the other boy down to a position where he was crouching or kneeling.

The boy was then pushed onto pills, erect Penis so that the Penis was in his mouth.

This act of filet sha or oral sex lasted for a short period, which the boy estimates to be a couple of minutes.

You'll hear that Pel then stopped and told the boy to remove his pants.

The boy stood upright and pulled down or dropped his pants and his underwear in accordance with the instruction.

Pel then lowered his position so as to be almost crashed on his knees.

Hell then started touching the boy's genitalia while touching the boy's genitalia.

Pill was touching his own genitalia.

After a couple of minutes, Pel finished and stood up.

No, the little boys.

So to think that this happened to the little boys for it to happen to the little boy's is just they preach about God, preach about love, loved on I burn, that's that took away lives, took away innocence.

That's not love questions your belief in a church.

It's like all your life you brought up the church's God and love.

But if the church is is this night love, What's your view about George Pell?

What sort of person is he?

It's only a monster.

I couldn't describe someone like that.

After the incident, the choir boys went home.

One of them later told the court he didn't tell anyone.

The boy didn't say anything at the time about what had happened because he didn't want to jeopardize his scholarship in any way.

He was also cognizant of the position held by the accused man and the possible ramifications that might flow from saying something about what happened.

About a month later, George Pell approached the second boy again in a back corridor of the cathedral.

It's alleged that the accused man, Pel, pushed the boy against the war.

He then squeeze the boy's genitals over his robes before letting go.

I'm walking off Theo.

Events in the cathedral would change the course of their lives.

The identities of the 2 13 year old victims and their families can't be revealed.

But the family off the first choirboy wants to tell his story.

Hey, went from being this lovely boy who used to come to the football with me, who used to go on helping his grandparent's and hoped around the house to this boy who I keep wanting to go out all the time.

His whole bane.

Just who's different, boy just totally different, just didn't care about anything, didn't care about anyone, just didn't wanna be to breathe like you'd see him on.

The training was like Here you go, that's it.

But deep down you think that why you're rebelling so much?

Like what is it that you hate like?

You could sense that there was a bit of height.

Therefore, Authority King back as a person.

He changed.

He did.

He wasn't the same person.

That's what he was before.

Hedge.

Yeah, on Dhe changed so much that his life Really?

It's borrowed.

Yeah, but it's far.

Absolutely, absolutely.

Huh?

Look, Within a year of the abuse, the sun began to use heroin.

He started?

Yes.

I noticed some bits of foil that had been burnt.

And I noticed that my parents noticed that he's grandparent's was pretty young at this stage.

Yes, he waas he waas hellos.

Hey, would have been about third and fourth the time.

Um, yeah, yeah, very young at the time.

Very m.

It's devastating to what?

Your child like that because off these drug use, it was very hard to watch.

At 14.

Hey would spend nights where we wouldn't see him.

It would disappear for a day or two and then turn up as if nothing had happened.

Hayes schooling, of course, became heretic.

His attendance Hey was at the point where the choirmaster was going to expel him.

It meant that he would lose.

He's scholarship and we would then have to pay.

And we didn't have the thousands of dollars that were required to keeping the his mother suspected her son might have been abused for once.

I assume if he was exactly remember the words or yours, whether it was touched up or plied with and he told me, nor but a game with a shrub again, little niggling in there.

I'm never sitting thing 20 body, really going out thinking who you are, is signore.

And in a while after their again, I asked him, and again he told me No, and then I get this and I was just so angry with him for not telling me so angry.

Sometimes it's still very angry.

Their son died of a heroin overdose in 2014.

He took his secret about George Pill to his grave.

I don't tell about people having passed away till part of the truth, but not all of it, because I don't want sympathy.

I don't want pity.

You know, it's very hard to explain to people that I'm a brother, struggle for half his life with drug abuse problem, and it's very hot.

You know, I have never told anybody this devastating because he helps to explain a lot of incidents in his life.

Hands it is, it's devastating.

It is.

It's hard when you think a child can't come outside.

This has happened because most times they're not believed.

I would like to think I would have Blake my son.

I would have liked.

It must be a really hard thing as a debt to contemplate its worst.

It's the worst.

I used to think when when he died, I was to think, What a waste of a life 31 is old and you did What a waste of a life.

The young man's death had a terrible impact on the other choir boy who was also abused by George Pell.

After the funeral, the other boy finally told his own mother that he had been abused.

She rang Bernard Barrett at the victim's group, Broken Rights.

I answered the phone, and she explained that her son, it was a former choir Billy.

It was very upset because he had a troubled life since his teens and hey was killing her for the first time at the age of 30.

But having been abused by a priest Later, Bernard Barrett spoke to the second choirboy.

He told me that when he was a Corbally at the Millbrook Cathedral.

Uh, one day, hey was sexually abused by a prominent person in in one of the rooms of the cathedral.

Who was that prominent?

Gave the name Archbishop Pill.

And that's how this investigation into Cardinal George Pell began.

When you get a figure like that is a high, highest rank Catholic in Australia, he's a high position in the Vatican.

We obviously had to trade things very seriously in relation to the hair.

We conducted the investigation to make sure that a ll the boxes were ticked as faras not letting information out.

We had to be very sacred, even relation to making sure that this wasn't put it into the public arena.

Doug Smith oversaw the investigation When it started through your work with Tess, Fool, Sana and Victoria.

Police had had a lot of experience with these Catholic church perpetrators.

How did you find the Catholic Church in dealing with them?

In these cases, they were very difficult to deal with.

Um that would sigh that they wanted to cooperate with the police in relation to all these allegations and now openly saying that that would cooperate.

But I think you could almost say that the way that they class, their cooperation will be similar to, Ah, practiced a lying on the ground in the middle of the street, not resisting the place.

But the place would have to pick that person up and drag him off the street.

And I think that that's the level of cooperation that the Catholic Church gave this.