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Finally, despite the worst efforts of Victoria Police, Victoria’s legal system, and the media’s smear factory, Cardinal George Pell has had his conviction overturned by the High Court.
The full judgment can be read here. “A” refers to the choirboy and “B” to his deceased fellow chorister. Below some key elements of that unanimous ruling:
57. In this Court, the respondent correctly noted that a number of the claimed improbabilities raise the same point. It remains that acceptance of A’s account of the first incident requires finding that: (i) contrary to the applicant’s practice, he did not stand on the steps of the Cathedral greeting congregants for ten minutes or longer; (ii) contrary to long-standing church practice, the applicant returned unaccompanied to the priests’ sacristy in his ceremonial vestments; (iii) from the time A and B re-entered the Cathedral, to the conclusion of the assaults, an interval of some five to six minutes, no other person entered the priests’ sacristy; and (iv) no persons observed, and took action to stop, two robed choristers leaving the procession and going back into the Cathedral.
58. It suffices to refer to the evidence concerning (i), (ii) and (iii) to demonstrate that, notwithstanding that the jury found A to be a credible and reliable witness, the evidence as a whole was not capable of excluding a reasonable doubt as to the applicant’s guilt.
And there is this:
124. The assumption that a group of choristers, including adults, might have been so preoccupied with making their way to the robing room as to fail to notice the extraordinary sight of the Archbishop of Melbourne dressed “in his full regalia” advancing through the procession and pinning a 13 year old boy to the wall, is a large one. The failure to make any formal report of such an incident, had it occurred, may be another matter.
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Cardinal Pell: ‘I hold no ill will to my accuser’
Will the ABC now abandon its ‘Get Pell’ campaign, an effort that saw one of its online reports illustrated with the picture below?
Not if Barrie Cassidy’s grasp of the law is any indication. Oblivious to the fact that an overturned conviction restores the presumption of innocence, he tweets
Cassidy, set to return to the ABC, isn’t alone. Follow this link for more howls from the mob, many of them defamatory should Cardinal Pell choose to sue.
________________________
The Guardian, whose coverage of George Pell’s travails has been no less twisted than the ABC’s reports:
Some good news in bleak times. The Vic justices who dismissed the appeal should be immediately sacked for incompetence.
Where to now for Victoria?
Well done to the Quadrant writers who have been studying the case who are now fully justified in their criticism of the courts and the police.
We should not lose sight of the fact that Cardinal Pell has spent over 400 days incarcerated. This has been truly a travesty of justice of enormous proportions – saved, thankfully, only at the very end. I heard one legal commentator on Sky News claim, to the effect, that the outcome showed that the legal process had worked. It simply didn’t work. The case should never have been brought to court in the first place. The second jury was clearly composed of people wanting in common sense. And, I agree with March above, the two judges on the Victorian appeals court, who confirmed the jury’s verdict, should consider their position.
A 7-0 decision supporting Pell’s innocence vs 2-1 of the Victorian court of appeal. Not one of 7 High Court judges agreed with the court of appeal majority. Their mistake was to mistake the credibility of A’s testimony for the truth of events. The improbability of the events should have weighed against The belief that A’s evidence, credible as it seemed, represented the true course of events. Surely the disposition to make that error amounts to a prejudice on the part of the court of appeal majority. Weinberg did not fall for it.
“You are then entitled to maintain your view and you are under no obligation to apologise for holding those views’ didn’t apply to Tony Abbott, Andrew Bolt and many others who were accused of being ‘protectors of paedophiles’
The bile spewing from ABC’s cesspit on facebook is astonishing. You would expect that finding a man innocent would be met with the same response as being found guilty, that is justice has been served, but not their ABC…queue Sarah Fergerson.
The reading from Palm Sunday could not have come at a better time.
‘Psalm 22:16 (RHE) (21-17) For many dogs have encompassed me: the council of the malignant hath besieged me.’
Barry Cassidy proves once again, as if further proof were needed, that he, the ABC and all its prominent “personalities” are either too corrupt or too stupid to be tolerated for one more minute. For an ABC commentator so totally ignorant as not to understand that it’s never been a function of our legal system to find an accused “innocent”, is surely a terrible thing. It’s even worse that a taxpayer-funded organisation like the ABC that purports to be independent and trustworthy should continue to employ such people.
We’re doomed.
And it’s great to see a photo (old, I know) of Cardinal George Pell smiling.
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I hope there are many more.
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🙂
Can’t say I would hold Pell’s Christian views about all this if it had been I who was so unjustly treated. I would have in my sights the Vic Police, the author of the book “Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of George Pell, that so-called comedian who wrote and sang a disgusting song about him long before he was sent to trial, the ABC, etc, and I would be hitting them all with law suits that would make even the Vatican flinch at their magnitude.
The idea of an ‘independent national broadcaster’ has been totally discredited by the ABC itself, which has proved to be a partisan enterprise that is blatantly Left wing (the typical ideology of persons in the pay of the government). For many years, but particularly under the leadership the aged ghost from the Women’s Weekly, the ABC has been stridently ‘feminist’. It was a very active supporter of same-sex ‘marriage’, and continues to promote the joys of homosexuality and lesbianism at every opportunity. It has campaigned relentlessly for climate change ‘action’ and the ‘climate emergency’ – yet another partisan position. It promotes the agenda of ‘aboriginal’ (often white) activists who want to divide Australia along racial lines and assists them by propagating false accounts of Australian history. The list goes on. Almost every day since Donald Trump’s election, the ABC has carried some sort of anti-Trump ‘opinion piece’ on it is ‘news’ website. Like so many on the Australian Left, the ABC evidently cannot accept that a person who does not agree with its own socialist ideology should be allowed to govern another country. It’s disappointment at the failure of the Trump impeachment agenda was palpable. And of course the ABC has devoted a lot of its seemingly limitless energy and resources to conducting a long-running campaign to get George Pell crucified to satisfy the howling mob. The LNP must deal with this. Taxpayer funds should not be used to finance this partisan broadcaster. Privatisation is the best option.
Great news. Justice is done, But not in Victoria, but for the whole of Australia by a unanimous Court. Rest well Cardinal, and enjoy freedom. And celebrate with all of us the immense tale of redemption we are not about to commemorate.
Stephen Due, regarding your closing sentence “Privatisation is the best option”, I could list at least two, better than privatisation but I cannot bring myself to such brutality. Sorry,
Greg Williams, yours is much more humane but I haven’t got enough time left to enjoy the rewards.
I’ve already written to my Senator asking that something be done to pull the ABC into line. If it can’t be demolished entirely, perhaps the following would help:
1. Pass a law forbidding the ABC, as an organisation, from holding and expressing a collective view on any political issue whatsoever.
2. Pass a further law prohibiting any employee or contracted”personality” expressing publicly, via any medium, a personal opinion on any political issue.
3. Pass a law that would make the organisation and its employees or contracted “personalities”, jointly and severally, accountable for any damages done to individuals or corporations by their statements or activities.
“The only basis for long term healing is truth and the only basis for justice is truth, because justice means truth for all”. Extract from a public statement by Cardinal George Pell today.
The unanimous decision for acquittal is right. It is also right – and fitting – that Carmelite Sisters should be hearing the first Mass Cardinal Pell celebrates in over 400 days.
After listening to the main stream media reporting on today’s High Court finding, I’m left wondering if George Pell was on trial for his own alleged crimes, or for those of the whole Catholic Church in Australia.
In regards to the ABC, the sooner they are cut loose off the public purse the better.
Echoing the comment above by March: The High Court today exposed the dangerous incompetence of Chief Justice Ferguson and President Maxwell of the Victorian Supreme Court. They are simply not to up to the very onerous jobs they hold and need to go.
Well done, Quadrant. I just bought a subscription because of your excellent work.
#notcatholicbut As soon as I learned of the judgment, I offered up a Te Deum. I can think of nowhere nicer for the Cardinal to spend his coronavirus isolation than in a guest room (not a cell!) in the Carmelite Monastery, recovering in the company of the sisters the liturgical rhythm that has underpinned the greater part of his life and which he has recently been denied. Heartiest congratulations to all who have written such competent and well-reasoned articles in the last more-than-a-year. I had thought that the rants of the disappointed luvvies would entertain me, but I find their lack of reason and basic knowledge of legal principles so distressing that I haven’t the stomach.
Madd320 it was quite clear to me that the Pell trial was, for the media and advocates, about holding Pell responsible for the collective crimes of Catholic figures (including laymen in schools) and little about the specific claims. And the reporting about the “terrible effect” upon victims; if it wasn’t Pell who offended against them why? It’s like saying families of murder victims are “gutted” if an accused murderer is acquitted! Clearly they want Pell held personally responsible for the collective crimes of all criminals in the RC Church over the years. The rest is personal animus against Pell. Only a little research shows the crimes simply could not have happened as claimed, and misidentifying the wine was the clincher, and undermined the so-called “corroboration” claimed by the prosecution. In truth, for the media Pell’s real crimes were crimes against “progressivism”!
Did anyone take one for the team tonight and watch the ABC News and 7.30. I watched Sky all night and was heartened to see their unwavering support for the High Court’s decision. Andrew Bolt was particularly powerful.
I presume that the ABC stuck closely to Barry Cassidy’s idiotic tweet that while the High Court did not find sufficient evidence to convict Pell, it did not find him innocent. Good old Barry, the gift that keeps on giving.
” … despite the worst efforts of Victoria Police, Victoria’s legal system, and the media’s smear factory,” It was not these organisations that inflicted this inquisition on Pell. It was hateful, mean-spirited people with a psychopathic disorder. Identify who they are and remove all of them.
As for the ABC. It has to go if not in total, then just the corrupted 95% of it that serves no useful purpose.
For sheer bloody-minded perversity, this morning’s Canberra Times Editorial really takes the cake:
https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/6715374/high-court-case-shows-catholic-church-subject-to-law/
Two other articles drawn from The Conversation are even worse. The jury’s decision should be sacrosanct. The majority appeals court decision confirmed this. Pell won his High Court appeal on a mere technicality. Blah, blah, blah.
Read and weep. Again, with lawyers and the media like this, we’re doomed.
Every one is aware of “TDS” or Trump derangement Syndrome, but it pales into insignificance when compared to “PDS” or Pell derangement syndrome. It used to be Abbott derangement syndrome and that may see some resurgence, given that Tony is a catholic.
Sorry to disagree with you Greg Williams. Suing the ABC is by default suing the taxpayer.
Now if we could have all the hysterics pay, I would be happy.
But, I would rather see any penalties incurred by the ABC be paid out of their budget in the form of a permanently reduced budget, with an order of magnitude penalty factor thrown in for good measure.
Jodi will be distraught.
DT
> ” … the ABC and all its prominent “personalities” are either too corrupt or too stupid to be tolerated …”
This is the true depth of noble cause corruption combined with almost unlimited (and guaranteed) funding and almost unlimited power.
These people find 7-0 completely offensive to their vanity.
As Greta Thunderberger pointed out” “How very dare you ?”
There are two wider and deeper problems with the ABC that I think need to be addressed.
One is the rationale behind the institution of an ‘independent national broadcaster’. The ABC was established, presumably in imitation of the BBC, as a highbrow socialist enterprise. ‘Independent’ evidently meant ‘free of commercial influence’. Socialists worry about commerce. Meanwhile both the ABC and the BBC, in true socialist style, have become pretentious centres of ideological influence. How can institutions like this be justified?
Secondly, there is an intellectual problem facing the ABC and its supporters as to the basis of ethical judgement. Atheistic socialism, which is the predominant ideology of the ABC, is in principle devoid of moral authority. While seeking to clothe its preferences in a garb of righteousness, it must in the end appeal to either personal sentiment or received opinion. Such is the path to the French Revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat – to the howling mob and the guillotine. There is no moral safety in the received opinion of a corrupt and degraded society. But where is moral authority to be found?
Rusty, if you believe that we lack empathy for children who have been sexually abused because we celebrate Cardinal Pell’s you must not have followed the numerous articles in Quadrant on Line, and the ensuing commentary that have been published here over the last four years. It does nothing to help shamefully abused children to have an innocent man persecuted by a howling mob merely to satisfy some atavistic urge to punish the Catholic Church for the sins of some of its clergy.
If you seriously believe that the process of “getting” Cardinal Pell (the means) was in any way justified by his conviction (the end), then your moral compass needs recalibration, and your obvious inability to argue rationally needs extensive work.
Rusty if there is any ‘gloating’ it is directed primarily against the ABC, the thoroughly corrupt Victorian Police, and other mindless Leftist twittersphere thugs that perpetrated this monstrous injustice. It has nothing to with a lack of empathy for victims. As you point out, child sexual abuse is not the sole province of the Catholic Church. The incidence of abuse in the Catholic Church is no higher, on a per capita basis, than in any other church. And most abuse occurs outside institutions. The Catholic Church is just the high profile example of something that infects society at large. That said, one could argue that abusing priests are more despicable than other abusers. This discussion is all about a monstrous and blindingly obvious miscarriage of justice, nothing more.
Stephen, from the outset, whether intentionally or not, the ABC filled a gap that commercial radio could not, or did not wish to fill. Coverage of extensive rural areas with specialised personnel equipped to communicate effectively with rural communities was essential, but generally not available but for the ABC. Its management of the Symphony Orchestras was exemplary.
No doubt Geoffrey Luck can correct me if I’m wrong, but for me the wheels started to fall off when it started to play party politics, something I had not noticed until after television arrived. By the Whitlam era, of course, the rot was all-pervasive and irremediable.
So, I believe that the political cancer needs to be completed excised. If this can be achieved while preserving those valuable and in some areas essential traditional roles, it must be done. If the “cure” kills the “patient”, it need only be so if the staff collective refuses to cooperate. As it is, if it dies it will be no great loss.
Doubting Thomas mentioned Andrew Bolt. Last evening was his finest hour. I don’t know whether it is possible to still see it online. But if it is and you haven’t seen it you should.
I would like to know why the complainant comes out of this squeaky clean. Vile accusations were made which were not the slightest bit credible. Yet nobody seems to care.
re Doubting Thomas:
ABC propaganda has it, that though the ABC may be the Voice of Radio Havana, it is essential for rural folk.
The Bega Valley was looked after for the best part of half a century by a private radio station 2BE, through the depression, WWII, and for long afterwards with news, weather, stock reports and entertainment.
The ABC waited until 1960 to metastasize to the Bega Valley.
I did find the ABC vital on one occasion, when flying an aeromedical mission. I lost all my gyros in cloud one night near Clermont. I remembered what an old bomber pilot taught me: tune up a very powerful ABC radio station [Rockhampton – much stronger signal than the private chaps], put the ADF needle on the nose, and keep it there. The needle will not only tell you [1] which wing to pick up but [2] take you home even if home is 200 miles away. Lucky there were no storms that night to confuse the needle.
T B, the ABC station at Orange, 2CR, was well established by 1960, and had no difficulty competing with several commercials covering the Nyngan area where we lived. Their stronger signal helped immensely. (As a recovering air trafficker, I can imagine your experience. The pucker factor must have been awesome.)
Peter Smith,
yes Bolt was oi fire last night.
Unfortunately many cannot or simply refuse to differentiate between the Catholic Church as a whole and George Pell as an individual. Thus the exoneration of Pell is falsely seen as an exoneration of the Church. Support for Pell is seen as support for the despicable behavior of some priests and administrators within the Church in the past. This is irrational deranged thinking writ large. It’s called conflation.
Peter Smith wrote “We should not lose sight of the fact that Cardinal Pell has spent over 400 days incarcerated”.
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Nor that so many of those days were spent in solitary confinement (23 hours per day), defined by the UN as torture:
The Mandela Rules, updated in 2015, are a revised minimum standard of UN rules that defines solitary confinement as “the confinement of prisoners for 22 hours or more a day without meaningful human contact.” Solitary confinement may only be imposed in exceptional circumstances, and “prolonged” solitary confinement of more than 15 consecutive days is regarded as a form of torture
Rusty wrote: “You all profess to be intelligent….”
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I have never in this forum so professed, nor can recall anyone else doing so, and you cannot know what we have done elswhere. What’s the basis of your claim?
elsewhere
Anti-Catholic bigotry has corrupted the minds of many. To the extent that they no longer can think rationally and logically and with fair judgement of events and evidence. Daniel Andrew’s (a fake Catholic) is now preaching the ‘principle’ of ‘guilty as accused until proven innocent’ – the reverse of standard practice of the law.
The vandalizing of St Patrick’s Cathedral reinforces my comment above. Will Daniel Andrews condemn this unlawful act? I think you know the answer.
Location: VIC
Response Required: Yes
Program: 7pm TV News
Program Date: 2020-04-07
ABC Service\Network: ABC Television
ABC Recipient: Audience & Consumer Affairs
Subject: Material omission in Pell judgement by High Court
Your Comments: In the entire item on the High Court’s freeing of Pell, flagship ABC TV News 7pm did not once say the 7 High Court judges’ decision was “unanimous”. I am sure that if the decision was 4-3 the News would have mentioned it. But because the unanimity of the decision is severely damaging to the ABC’s long-standing crusade against Pell, it was deliberately omitted that the decision was unanimous.
It is impossible to believe that the word “unanimous” was omitted for any other reason than bias.
The ABC charter says or implies that material facts should not be omitted.
Thanks for attending to my complaint.
Regarding the defacement of the monastery and the cathedral, strange there’s never a policeman around when you need one.
All people demonstrate “a level of intellect”, some very high, some very low, some smack in the middle of the “bell”, but you accused not the authors of articles but commenters (which are at times the same) of “You all profess to be intelligent”.
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Don’t you know the vast difference between “demonstrate” and “profess”? I doubt you can find one example of a commenter (or author) that has professed “to be intelligent”.
Rusty, I fail to see how the lynching of a man unanimously acquitted (seven votes to nil!) by the High Court would in any way advance the cause of children who have been sexually assaulted. The High Court’s judgement calls for an end to scapegoating.
Rusty, the criminal standard of proof – proof of guilt beyond reasonable doubt – is a legal reality – part of our law, not a whim of us hard-hearted, religiously biassed possessors of some as “level of intellect”. By its very nature, it is designed to minimise if not totally eliminate the effect of mere emotions in the decision of guilt or innocence. Feeling sorry for a “victim” (or an accused being tried) should have absolutely no part in the legal process.
Thus, “rock solid evidence” or as near to it as practicable should be the very least that is required to convict anyone of a crime beyond reasonable doubt. Anything less is, as a matter of law and simple justice, is insufficient under our legal system. In this particular case, nobody demanded such evidence from a “terrified child”. The fact that he may have been a terrified child if and when he claimed he was assaulted, did not move him, as a mature adult, to bring his complaint to the attention of anyone in authority in the many years since until he was actively recruited by VICPOL to help them in their witch-hunt against Cardinal Pell.
Yet, when he appeared in court as a middle-aged man, he was allowed to give evidence as if he were still a terrified child, and deliberately protected from cross examination in the retrial.
Please spare us the emotional BS, Dusty.
How does this satirical website get away with this?
https://doublebaytoday.com/young-boy-marks-himself-as-safe-on-facebook-after-seeing-george-pell-in-the-street/
or this:
https://doublebaytoday.com/dramatic-increase-in-young-people-staying-home-as-george-pell-released-report/
Or this:
https://doublebaytoday.com/george-pell-fined-1k-for-breaching-social-distancing-rules-after-loitering-unnecessarily/
Rusty, you are impervious to reason, it seems. Your anti-Catholic bigotry is so case-hardened that nothing can penetrate it.
Even if the Catholic Church were saturated with paedophiles, if nine out of ten of its male clergy were to be proven to have sexually abused young children, that particular statistic would not have been in any way relevant to the determination of Cardinal Pell’s guilt. That there may be a queue a mile long of complainants lining up to sue him in either the criminal or civil courts for alleged offences is also entirely irrelevant to the determination of his guilt in this particular case.
For you to infer that I and the others in here were in any way “supporters” of Cardinal Pell, because we deplored the appalling injustice of the processes by which he was so wrongly convicted, is simply to miss our points. To infer that we are somehow unaware of or uncaring about the suffering of genuine victims of child abuse is just plain childish.
You’re in a deep hole. Stop digging!
Rusty, what I find deplorable is your total lack of empathy and compassion for an elderly man in poor health who has been released from prison having been acquitted, after unjustly spending 405 days in solitary confinement. Maybe the only way that you will develop an understanding is if a relative of yours is unfortunate enough to go through this terrible experience.
In summary, you want a man imprisoned for life, on charges of your own invention that have never been before a court, just after he has been emphatically acquitted of related charges by the highest court in the land.
It’s probably therapeutic but please try and summarise. You might find that it helps you to reason more clearly.
I suspect the Macbot has returned. Classic bait and switch – setup a straw-man ‘moral’ position (in this case the detrimental effects of child sex abuse – something of a no-brainer), which appears to be connected with the true argument, but isn’t at all really. Then get people running off on all sorts of tangents as you pretend to argue from the straw-man moral high ground (in this case, being against child sex abuse. Well, derr). On this basis start perverting the facts of the argument in devious ways so that they sound credible but are either not pertinent or even accurate (note the points about Pell’s supposed actions which have no basis in evidence, nor are they relevant), and in so doing start multiple pointless arguments, thus trolling the conversation.
Now I am of the opinion that Pell, and Catholic leadership in general, have been pretty much spectators to (one of) a serious problem in their church which relates, in my opinion, to the presence of institutionalised homosexuality. Pell himself referred to this failure in his statement. Unlike the Macbot’s pretence (if that is who it is), I disagree that an innocent man should be punished for a non existent crime, nor that Pell is an intrinsically bad person. I see the problem as a theological one, in that the Catholic subservience to Greek philosophy has opened the door to human ideas and weakness, and concurrently closed the door to a solution to related ills.
So neither Pell, nor the pope, nor anyone else is likely going to fix the problem, because it is what it is. The Catholic church would first have to un-make itself and turn back the clock to about 600 AD and the Council of Chalcedon.
But while we’re looking at the Catholic church, perhaps we could also take the logs out of our eyes and examine the most fundamental environment for child sexual abuse – the broken family.
Yep, reads like the Macbot to me.
Rusty, it seems that you are accusing the High Court of covering up paedophile activities for decades. You need to come up with some proof and take it to the police. I don’t think “demonstrating” is the word that you are wanting to use. You are not much clearer when you are brief.
“A single judgment is the written reasons of one judge. Sometimes the High Court issues a single, unanimous judgment in which all judges join. One perceived advantage of a unanimous judgment is that the Court’s view and the interpretation of the law is made very clear.”
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Or, as John Ferguson wrote in The Australian: “But the Pell critics cannot run from the High Court’s decision. It is straight and clean as a high-powered bullet.
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The 7 HCA Justices:
Were appointed by:
Howard (1)
Rudd (1)
Gillard (2)
Abbott (2)
Turnbull (1)
.
3 Females
4 Males
.
1 homosexual
.
Variously educated at
State,
Catholic
Anglican
Independent
Independent Christian
Presbyterian
schools
.
Ages from 46 to 69
.
As best I can discover only one attends Catholic Mass, and he does that as support for his Catholic wife, although he identifies as Anglican.
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Very diverse lot, hard to see how they would be biased towards Pell as a group; easy to see how they have correctly applied the law.
Rusty, your concerns have validity but first consider your contention that Bernard was off mark referring to homosexuality rather than paedophilia.
The latter word is the wrong word to use when speaking of sexual abuse by RC clergy, as it hides the underlying problem. It refers to an adult whose primary sexual attraction is to pre-pubescent children and the typical perpetrator is a male aged in his 30s or 40s interfering with a young girl. In running sore which bedevils the RC church the situation is that of a man maybe even older than that engaging in adult homosexual activity with a post-pubescent boy not yet having left school e.g. the situation alleged to have applied in the Pell case and also the recent St Kevin’s abuse. The correct word to use is pederasty.
The underlying disorder is not paedophilia, i.e. attraction to a pre-pubescent person but homosexuality, i.e. same-sex attraction.
Overlaid on top of this foundation is the attraction to post-pubescent minors, a secondary issue, as a whole being termed pederasty.
The misuse of the word paedophilia is deliberate, as the PC Left will not have anyone say anything about the dysfunctions attaching to homosexuality.
Jack Brown, you have incorrectly attributed that quote to me. Somebody else said that.
Ooops sorry and thanks Bernard. On my phone is hard to scroll. pgang then.
Rusty.
The criminal justice system is at best a means for upholding retributative justice and at worst, in this case, by reversing the onus of proof, as a means of taking retribution against an individual, for the sins of the institution he represents. The case against Pell was pursued by left wing government authorities, principally VicPol and the ABC, against advice from the OPP on grounds it would not stand up in court. The HCA has vindicated that initial advice and the abuse of the courts by VicPol and the ABC for their political ends. To what end – a lot of people have been hurt and had their hopes crushed by this wilful pursuit of Pell where, like most cases pushed by the Left, the process is the punishment. Careers would have been made for people within both organisations by this cynical abuse of J.
One of your comments illustrates how successful these organisations were in shifting the burden of proof from the prosecution to the defence. All the defence had to do was raise a reasonable doubt yet your comment accords with the line the jury took and supported by the majority Vic appeal court that unless the doubt was absolute, i.e. no doubt at all, then it was not reasonable. By this I allude to the fact you mention that none of the opportunity witnesses were able to give a cast iron guaranteed alibi that usual practice was followed on the day. This was not required to make the doubt reasonable.
Where to now. Despite numerous claims of pederasty against Pell not a single case has had any legs in court, and there is unlikely to be any. More likely than direct abuse by Pell would be what you refer to, i.e. that he has covered up such direct abuse. In this case the criminal justice system might as, a hypothetical, be more relevant, i.e. perhaps he has been an accessory after the fact. If you have any evidence against Pell for having done so then taking the matter to the police would be appropriate. However this is only a hypothetical suggestion for two reasons: (1) VicPol can issue fines to young girls trying to get their hours up but useless at anything else and (2) I doubt that he has crossed the line to that extent.
Much more realistic are the points you mention and they relate more to his role as a senior manager of an organisation which attracts pederasts to become ‘staff’ and invites post-pubescent boys to place their trust in all staff and clergy, when inevitably there will be some who give in to their inclinations. The cases which come to the fore point to a failure in management: Their occurrence cannot be eliminated but when it has happens then far too many victims have met with the typical response from any management in any human organisation: management gaslights the victims to fob them off and put the problem back onto the victim.
While not a criminal offence this is perhaps the most damaging part of the victims’ situation. For having undergone an emotionally traumatic event or series of events the human brain, by virtue of its evolution, must (1) look for what it did wrong and (2) having found the lesson to learn it the needs to test that provisional conclusion so that (3) it avoids making the same mistake again. If this process stalls then the victim is stuck with Post Traumatic Stress so-called Disorder, not a disorder but a normal reaction to disorder. The appropriate way out is at stage (1) for a person with the duty of care to point out that the victim did nothing wrong, and the perpetrator was the person who was wrong.
Managers hate a whistleblower and in effect this is what a victim who complains is, so managers with a duty of care to those who place their trust in them will almost always gaslight victims with the end result being a long period of PTSD until the victim comes to the realise what they did wrong: They trusted the perpetrator and the management when neither should have been trusted. The end result is that their ability to trust is destroyed. Some of Pell’s behaviors when dealing with victims has had this effect I am sure but like most managers probably unaware of it. Those who would be thus aware are never likely to be promoted into management rank.
The criminal law cannot do anything about this Rusty and Restorative Justice is what is needed but it will never happen. The New Testament’s central dominating theme points to what is necessary and there is a specific protocol spelled out in Luke but it has never been implemented in the Church. Basically though it means Apology/Repentance from the organisation for its behaviours (even vicariously )and then, from a position of strength, Forgiveness from the victims. The RC Church in particular has a Sacramental ritual for this, i.e. Confession / Reconciliation.
At the end of the day boys being groomed by pederasts are on their own and must be drilled by their parents into being aware of being groomed and act to remove themselves from danger.
At my boarding school there was a priest who insisted on inspecting the boys’ fingernails for cleanliness straight out of the shower, while his gaze went elsewhere, so we all knew what he was like but he took out his frustrations on booze and inflicting corporal punishment.
My brother encountered attempts at grooming by three different individuals, two ‘brothers’ and a football coach. In each case he immediately left the room and would not enagage. The first situation was where the housemaster invited some Y7 boys into his suite and on the pretext of discussing a moral dilemma pulled out what today would be called gay porn. My brother immediately left the room but other, not so aware, stayed and would have been abused to suffer shame, guilt, self-blame and perhaps onto drugs or other dysfunctional lifestyles. One of the other brothers was later jailed for offences committed in another state when he was transferred by the school to a school in that other state. My brother was NOT left with PTSD, because he did the correct thing at the time but still holds the three staff in mind as filthy scum and never attends any school reunions, only keeping in contact with one or two good friends from those days.
Another friend from those days at school was also subjected to grooming. He realised what was going on and escaped. He was wise in that he did not raise it with the headmaster or other priest in a management role in the school. Instead he went to a line priest whom he trusted and that priest sorted the would be perpetrator man to man rather than through the hierarchy, and my friend was never bothered again.
Oone last comment to bring it back to the current situation: I was always concerned with the case against Pell and am glad the HCA dismissed it as they did. However I suspect my brother feels somewhat differently than I do.
Roger, this man, Rusty, apart from the outrageous length of his comments, is descending into personal insults (“moron”, “bigot”) and libel (“paedophile protector”, “supporter of child abuse”). It becomes impossible to debate with him under those circumstances. I fail to understand why he is allowed to behave in this manner that stifles debate, recreating the dismal situation with a similar individual not too long ago.
Bernard: Rusty will no longer be commenting on this site for precisely the reasons you mention.
Rusty, your abusive behaviour is pathetic. It emanates from your initial error of equating support for the freeing of Cardinal Pell after the unanimous decision of the High Court in his favour, to being akin to supporting child sexual abuse. There is no basis for this disgusting accusation on your part. On the other hand, you are demanding the lynching of a man found not guilty, against whom you keep making the basest accusations with no evidence. Lynching parties are disgusting and so are their members.
Jack, I admire your patience and persistence in trying to educate Rusty, a hopeless task, I fear.
There are a few additional points that I think need to be made.
First, the brain-damaged media always try to make the point that, at all relevant times, Cardinal Pell was “Australia’s most senior Catholic”. The implication is that, as such, he is responsible for, and accountable for, all the alleged crimes of Australian Catholic clergy, and those administrative shortcomings of Catholic Church in Australia. This, in itself, is a sign of the profound ignorance of most of the media and, almost certainly, of the vast majority of Australians including most Roman Catholics themselves.
It is true that as our only Cardinal he is Australia’s most senior Catholic. But such actual power as he has in Australia devolves from his appointment, by the Pope, to a bishopric or, as in his case, an Archbishopric. Each bishop is accountable to the Pope who appointed him. Such power, and the span of his responsibility, is limited to the diocese or Archdiocese to which he is appointed. As with military command, he has no power to intervene outside his own command. In this respect, he gains no additional power as a Cardinal, whose duties are mainly, if not solely limited Vatican policy. So as Archbishop of Sydney, Pell had no responsibilities for people or events in the Archdiocese of Melbourne.
As Archbishop of Melbourne, succeeding predecessors under whom the worst predation occurred, Pell has been blamed for their maladministration. It was not he who shifted the known paedophiles around. In fact, it was he who started the system, in cooperation with VICPOL, to try to get justice for the victims. It was he who sacked a number of known offenders from the clergy. But he could only do so within his own Archdiocese.
The problem is that he will always be judged as not having done “enough”, however long that piece of string is supposed to be in any person’s opinion. But to hold him accountable for events across the whole of Australia is just plain ignorant.
Second, the brain-damaged media encourage the belief that the RC Church almost literally has rivers of gold at its disposal, available freely to liquidate should the need arise. While, worldwide, the Church does possess many priceless assets and objets d’art, real estate are about the only assets of any value the Church in Australia possesses. So, once again the Church, Pell in particular, has been criticised for failing adequately to compensate the victims from this allegedly readily available vast pool of liquid assets. But, like every sane civil organisation, the Church insures against compensation claims that might be awarded against it. And, fundamental principles of compensation insurance that a) the insured must not admit liability, and b) the insurer has the right to negotiate or litigate the amount of any damages to be paid. Once again, the media, and many people believe that these perfectly standard commercial principles should not apply to the Church.
So, Pell and other bishops areacting as the are contractually compelled to act when they refuse to just dole out cash to claimants who allege that they are victims.
The ignorance of the general public is a bottomless pit, and I can’t see any hope for improvement.
Jack Brown,
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I was taken aback when a long-term friend, an ex-work-mate, drinking buddy, holiday companion, a strong conservative living in Bandt’s electorate, proclaimed Christian, displayed Pell Derangement Syndrome; it just did not fit.
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We had a long phone conversation after the HCA decision and it is clear his PellDS relates to actions of one priest in particular when he was in a Catholic boarding school who used to sit on his bed while my friend pretended to sleep, attempted grooming as others have pointed out is the usual way, not bull-at-a-cow as in the Pell allegations. He failed with my friend but was successful grooming others, as were other priests at my friend’s schools, and was “moved on”, later resigning and marrying an Asian woman.
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Maybe he was not motivated by pederasty inclinations, who can know? Maybe he had an aversion to masturbation and it was a case of “any port in a storm”.
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Whatever, zero reason to prosecute Pell, let alone find him guilty in contradiction of the long-held, enacted and practised principles of law so clearly articulated in the HCA judgement.
And you know we are privileged, old, white and male how?
And you know we are loyal to the Church how?
Thank you, Rusty, for your entirely superfluous lecture on ages of consent and so on. I daresay that most of us have at least as much knowledge of the law as you, and we can certainly understand why you have no belief in debating. Your not good at it.
Just to give you a bit of perspective, I was born, raised and educated as a Catholic. I spent nine years in a Catholic boarding school from age 7 to 16. My brother was there for 10, several years behind me. We had different teachers. Neither of us ever saw or heard of, then or since, of an incident of sexual abuse in that school. We are aware that we were very fortunate in that respect.
As for loyalty to the Church, I can only say that while I am very grateful for the education I received, and the strong moral and ethical principles that education gave me, I have not voluntarily entered a Catholic Church, except for weddings and funerals (of people other than myself) in more than 60 years. I consider myself to have a good understanding of the Catholic religion, and Christianity in general, and try to live by its tenets, but I have no loyalty to the institutions, Catholic or otherwise.
The only bias on display in this correspondence is yours. Get help.
Silly response. Many of the assumptions that you have made about me are incorrect. Not interested in discussing anything with lynching mobs.
lloveday I have come across this attitude a couple of times also. They had a bad experience themselves and therefore hate Pell, in whom they’ve finally found somebody to punish. You can see where they’re coming from, even thought it’s wrong thinking.
Commenter “Rusty” will no longer be commenting on this site. Abuse and personal attacks will not be tolerated. Nor will foul language.
This should not need to be said. If comment threads are to remain open, I hope it need never be said again.