The Social Media Witch-Hunt for George Pell

Vivian Waller is the principal lawyer at Waller Legal, a Melbourne-based firm she set up in 2007 that specialises in winning compensation for historic cases of sexual abuse against the Catholic Church. In 2018 Waller represented the complainant in a case that led to the imprisonment of Cardinal George Pell.

To my knowledge, Waller does not tweet under her own name but the Twitter handle @LyndsayFarlow champions her in many ways. It is true the nom de plume “Lyndsay Farlow” is not solely concerned to speak for Waller, but the common concerns are clear enough (which in turn are also shared by victims’ advocacy groups such as Broken Rites). These need to be highlighted especially given the revelations about Operation Tethering.

Set up in 2013 by Victoria Police, Operation Tethering became publicly known five years later when, at Pell’s committal, Detective Superintendent Paul Sheridan admitted Pell had been identified as a target long before any complaints were received…