Robert Richter QC has apologised for his “terrible choice” of words after describing the abuse for which Cardinal Pell was convicted as “vanilla sexual penetration”.
The lawyer made the extraordinary statement during a plea hearing on Tuesday, causing widespread offence and appearing to concede that Pell was guilty.
Richter said he was attempting to explain that there were no aggravating feature’s to the offences, which the cardinal maintains did not happen.
“This is no more than a plain, vanilla sexual penetration case where a child is not volunteering or actively participating,” he said during the hearing.
