The Blind Hatred of the Get Pell Campaign

Cardinal Pell, the Media Pile-On & Collective Guilt

by Gerard Henderson

Connor Court, 2021, 440 pages, $39.95

Much of the anti-Pell literature was written before or adjacent to Cardinal George Pell’s trials on charges of historical sexual abuse against children. These books and shorter diatribes were, at least in some cases, written to influence the outcome of the trials, in order to see Pell crucified for his alleged sins and those of his Church. Following the Cardinal’s exoneration by the High Court in Holy Week 2020 and his subsequent dignified but defiant resumption of, for him, planet normal, those who were earlier out to get him have gone strangely silent on the Pell case. Silent but never apologetic—despite the utter humiliation of their case and cause by, first, Justice Mark Weinberg, and then, at last, by the magnificent seven (well, in this case, at least) of the High Court of Australia. There were grumblings from the likes of Daniel Andrews (an activist-commentator as well as a politician), John Laws and Barrie Cassidy, as well as from at least one Melbourne-based graffiti artist. One prominent member of the ABC Pell Hit Squad has gone on to target, with greater success, other Christians (Porter by name, in one case).

The pro-Pell forces didn’t write books before and during the trial and subsequent appeals processes, but they were never silent. A small but dogged band of supporters chose to counter the guilty narrative, with logic, evidence, restraint and persistence. Perhaps they felt that there was something missing in the Church’s rabbit-caught-in-the-headlights posture concerning Pell, a lacuna to fill. Quadrant became Pell-support central, though there were other nodes of pushback, including from two canny observers who have since written books on the subject. One of the books, truth to tell, is a collection of earlier articles, but no less important because of this. This is Frank Brennan’s book, published by Connor Court, Observations on the Pell Proceedings. The other book published by Connor Court on the Pell Case is Gerard Henderson’s Cardinal Pell, the Media Pile-On & Collective Guilt.

These follow Keith Windschuttle’s The Persec­ution of George Pell, published by Quadrant Books shortly after the High Court decision. Windschuttle’s book covered so much ground, so comprehensively, that one wondered what else might be said, absent some insider account emerging that might seek to explain what motivated the attempted crucifixion and how they all worked together to pull it off. Answers to the first of these questions are pretty obvious, and nobody—whether from the surviving accuser (the still, at least publicly, anonymous Witness J) or his family, from the family of the deceased “non-accuser”, from Victoria Police, from the bitter survivor groups, from the priest-chasing lawyers, from anti-Pell publishers, or from the hyper-interconnected media, including the social media hate groups linked to the lawyer Vivian Waller—has yet broken ranks to explain the inner workings of Team Get Pell. One might also have expected an update on Tess Livingstone’s 2002 biography of the Cardinal, but none has appeared to date. Certainly, the post-2002 period of Pell’s life has been far more newsworthy than the earlier period that was the focus of the original biography. Pell himself has gone into print, with a three-volume prison diary of down-at-home realism, unadorned wisdom, exceptional charity, practised understatement, singular dignity and delightful ordinariness. His magnificent work, destined according to some Church observers to be a “spiritual classic”, is deservedly selling well and will go some way to help pay off his gargantuan legal debts.

Together these works provide a robust, indeed a compelling, counterweight to the biased diatribes penned strategically by Lucie Morris-Marr, Louise Milligan and Melissa Davey, which, alas, still adorn the shelves of legacy bookstores. One of the sadnesses of the one-sided public debate on Pell (with his supporters, not unexpectedly, marginalised by much of the corporate and publicly funded media) is that none of the recent pro-Pell books, which have done so much to expose the baselessness of the charges against him and the rabid agendas of his erstwhile opponents, will ever see the shelves of mainstream bookstores, while the hit-jobs remain there.

SO, to the Henderson work. John Howard, in his foreword to the book, accurately describes his former chief-of-staff as “relentless” and as a “dog with a bone”.

One would expect from Gerard Henderson a work that is painstaking, brutally well researched, hyper-attentive to detail, focused on the left-of-centre Australian media, and leaving no stone unturned in the pursuit of his quarry. His interest in defending Pell is not faith-based, and Henderson is no mere apologist for the Church. However, as a lifelong researcher into B.A. Santamaria (another “notorious conservative”) and the Labor Party split of the 1950s, Henderson could be taken to share Pell’s worldview, interests and background. So, he is sympathetic, undoubtedly, but with a nose for the truth of things, a contempt for lies and flummery and a never-to-be-sated passion for picking apart the shortcomings and blunders of his own lifelong adversaries in the media. Henderson, too, was a player in the Pell saga, so it is no surprise that much of the book reads as a history of his own vigorous stoushes with his (and Pell’s) media opponents over the long years of the Get Pell campaign. It should be noted that Henderson interviewed Cardinal Pell for the book, and the Cardinal clearly collaborated with him. Henderson also had access to Pell’s prison diaries and made strategic use of them.

There is so much grist to Henderson’s mill in the dismal record of the media in Australia generally, let alone with regard to George Pell. Reading the book, one sometimes gets the impression that many of his accusers in the media had been waiting their whole lives for the Pell crucifixion moment. Think Louise Milligan, the fembot activist from central casting salivating at being let off the leash to chase Pell. She was born for this mission, and the rest of her life will, surely, be an anti-climax, Christian Porter notwithstanding.

Henderson’s book is meticulous. To re-read the hatreds and vindictive biases of those who formed the Pell posse determined to run him out of town, to observe again the inter-connections of journalists with activists, and to be reminded of the sheer size and breadth of the posse is uncomfortable reading for those of us who instinctively align with Pell (both in relation to his alleged crimes and, more broadly, on many cultural issues) and who have nothing but contempt for his myriad accusers. Most of them come across in Henderson’s telling as mean-spirited, savage, ruthless chancers who have latched onto this or that victimhood and have made it their life’s work. If George Pell hadn’t been there to skewer, they would have had to invent someone who could be. In some ways, that is exactly what they did. They created a bogeyman, and then set out to slay him. And as the Covid unvaccinated well know, the in-crowd loves a bogeyman.

Henderson’s book has three themes, all encapsulated in the title:

• The story of George Pell’s stance as a “theologically conservative” Catholic prelate and his stellar, though endlessly controversial career (about which Henderson drew appropriately on Tess Livingstone’s earlier biography);
• The media (and related) pile-on; and
• The idea that Pell—or someone from the Church, at least—should pay for the grotesque sins of sexual abuse and cover-up by his fellow churchmen. This is the notion of “collective guilt”, clearly in play in the Pell fiasco but utterly irrelevant—or, at least, it should have been—in courts of law created to establish the innocence or guilt of individual parties charged with specific crimes.

The book is highly readable, never dour, and one’s interest never flags, despite Henderson’s measured style in his relentless foraging for the truth. The errors on the part of many involved in getting Pell that Henderson reveals in the book are nothing less than cringeworthy. Typically, though, he is controlled, almost understated, in his treatment of Pell’s (and often his own) opponents. Were he a cricketer you could say that he bowls a nagging line and length, and doesn’t resort to spraying the targets of his research with bouncers. His language rarely, if ever, comes across as angry, despite the venom contained therein. A little like the subject of his book, perhaps. He often uses words such as unprofessional, for example, to describe the most egregious of journalistic sins, sins that many are now prepared to believe were quite deliberate and committed out of spite.

THERE IS little doubt that the persecution of George Pell, though carried on in many quarters—not just the press—was an engineered act. Does believing this make one a conspiracy theorist (to use a phrase now quite fashionable as a means of shutting down debate)? Not really. The phrase “convergent opportunism” might suffice as an explanation, or perhaps reference to “Schelling points”, named after the strategy and games theorist Thomas Schelling. This is the idea of “co-operating without communicating”—so that one can easily identify how others will behave and react in response to one’s own statements and actions, and hence strategise on that basis. The Get Pell team didn’t need to meet for coffee every Monday morning to plan the week’s events. Mind you, some of Victoria Police’s legendary and timely leaks might suggest there was a little more in play with Pell. If he was, indeed, stitched up—and clearly he was—one might conclude that someone must have done (organised?) the stitching. Henderson doesn’t really address such questions. Given the comprehensiveness of his demolition of Pell’s enemies in the book, perhaps he doesn’t need to. In any case, such tantalising questions would at this time remain speculation without evidence. Henderson likes his and others’ assertions to be backed by evidence.

One of the most memorable passages in the book occurs at pages 166 and 167. This is “the list”. It provides a register of Pell’s active opponents who used, over at least a decade and in some cases considerably more than a decade, public platforms to first, oppose the Cardinal, then to accuse him of covering up the Church’s crimes, and finally, to create and then steer a baying mob into calling him a child molester and demanding his incarceration and humiliation. The list goes on for nearly a page of names. Many, many names on the list are employees of one media outfit, whose salaries are paid by Australian taxpayers.

From this massive list, Henderson identifies the big four—David Marr, Louise Milligan, Lucie Morris-Marr and Melissa Davey. They have all written books about the case. There is also a fairly large B team, uncovered in detail as providing important back-up for the A team. (There is also a list of the Cardinal’s persistent defenders and those who thought he had been betrayed by the system.)

Looking back, it now all seems surreal, scarcely believable, such was the always wafer-thin case against Pell, the demolition job executed on that case by Justice Weinberg of the Appeals Court of Victoria and then by the unanimous verdict (seven-zip as Henderson repeatedly calls it) of the High Court, the subsequent (sullen) virtual silence of the Get Pell brigade, and by the Cardinal’s own serene progress since his catastrophic ordeal in prison. Yet the delusional, hate-filled behaviour (“visceral hatred”, as Don Aitkin has called it) of hundreds of people generally employed to tell the truth and to be independent, curious and rational did really happen, as Henderson’s book reminds us in head-shaking detail.

OF GREATEST interest to this reader is the section of the book on Victoria Police, since this is where much of the unwritten story still lies. Victoria Police is there to serve the people of Victoria, answerable to a democratically elected government that is responsible (in theory) to its voters. It should be of great concern to everyone that, whatever the inaccuracies, fact-failures, biases and agendas of journalists, we apparently cannot always rely on the law enforcement and judicial systems to be non-political, independent, truth-seeking, rigorous and fair in their treatment of law-abiding citizens. Victoria Police failed every test in the Pell case, as Henderson duly records. Victoria Police had signed up for the MeToo approach to sex abuse cases—reflexively believe the complainant, come what may—well before the Pell case emerged. It started with the woke Commissioner with the human-resources career background, Christine Nixon, who set out to change the culture of Victoria Police as soon as she arrived, and has continued to this day. The catalogue of malpractice is impressive, some of it already known and some of it given fresh treatment by Henderson:

• The incredible inaccuracies of VicPol’s claims against the Archdiocese of Melbourne in relation to its 1996 “Melbourne response” and to relations between the police and the Church from 1996 to 2010;
• VicPol’s stated decision around 2012 to focus on the Catholic Church in its pursuit of justice for alleged sex abuse victims;
• The formation of Operation Tethering in 2013 to get Pell, in the absence at the time of any suggestions of wrongdoing or a viable complainant;
• The repeated use of the legally incorrect term “victim” to describe complainants, with the outrageous advertising for St Patrick’s Cathedral “victims” in 2015;
• The removal of old-time coppers not ready to get with the feminist legal program;
• The populating of sex abuse sections of the force with survivor sympathisers;
• The obvious (and strategic) leaking of information about Pell to selected journalists;
• Inappropriate public statements by Pell-loather and Nixon successor Graham Ashton;
• Unusual high-level involvement (by Ashton’s successor Shane Patton) in the VicPol (business class) visit to Rome in 2016 to interrogate Cardinal Pell;
• The appalling lack of preparation by, and the ignorance of, VicPol interrogators at that Rome interview;
• The ignoring of the Office of Public Prosecution’s caution about charging Pell;
• The prosecution case being so weak that it made several highly acclaimed prosecutors look very, very silly;
• The final, scarcely believable obfuscations and denials by Ashton that VicPol ever “targets” people or conducts “vendettas”.

Risibly, as Henderson notes, Ashton stated in April 2020 that Victoria Police’s brief “stood up well”. But it wasn’t only the police that behaved abominably in the Victorian justice system. Even the Royal Commission established in 2012 by Julia Gillard went after Pell, as Henderson effortlessly demonstrates. This was appalling, and played out in a number of ways—the nature of his grilling by Gail Furness SC, Counsel Assisting the Commission, the length of time he was grilled in the witness box, the attempts to link him to Gerald Ridsdale and other convicted priest-pedophiles, and the groundless and damaging conclusions the commission reached about Pell. For Henderson and for many others, the Royal Commission was a Get-the-Catholic-Church affair, whatever Gillard’s original intentions.

WHAT IS to be done, then? There is quite a bit there to be going on with, for any government remotely interested in addressing the appalling failures of policing and the administration of justice (at best) or blatant corruption (at worst) on display in Victoria. We shouldn’t hold our breath on that one. None of the official Victorian “justice” family is breaking ranks, and there is no way the incumbent government will be investigating any wrongdoing by Ashton’s Circus. The relationship of mutual protection and dependence between Daniel Andrews and whichever puppet is put up as police commissioner is there for all to see. An opposition in Victoria with spine and gravitas would be on the front foot on this issue, but there isn’t one. The one person from the inside to venture opinions since Pell’s exoneration is the former Chief Crown Prosecutor in Victoria, Gavin Silbert, who has stated that, after reading Keith Windschuttle’s book The Persecution of George Pell (2020), he became convinced of his innocence. I wonder what he will make of Gerard Henderson’s book, and whether it might spur him on to reflect more fully and more broadly on the failure of the system in which he himself worked.

A final thought on the poisoned well of justice for Pell. A recent article on the use of behavioural psychology by governments to alter people’s thinking and actions (so-called “nudging”) published on the Covid-sceptical website Off Guardian has uncanny relevance to the media anti-Pell pile-on described by Henderson, which had the effect of shaping the minds of jurors and thus interfering with the Cardinal’s chances of receiving a fair trial:

People’s behaviour may be altered if they are first exposed to certain sights, words or sensations … people behave differently if they have been “primed” by certain cues … Emotional responses to words, images and events can be rapid and automatic … people can experience a behavioural reaction before they realise what they are reacting to … This shifts the focus of attention away from facts and information … Behavioural approaches embody a line of thinking that moves from the idea of an autonomous individual making rational decisions, to a “situated” decision-maker, much of whose behaviour is automatic and influenced by their choice of environment … citizens may not fully realise that their behaviour is being changed …

It is almost as if Team Get Pell had read this material (prepared by the UK Cabinet Office, no less, in 2010). The ready use by Victoria Police of terms like “decades long” abuse and “multiple complainants” ahead of the trials, for instance, and the oft-repeated “convicted pedophile” afterwards, firmly set the course of the official narrative on the Cardinal’s alleged crimes, and seeped through the efforts of Team Get Pell into the public consciousness.

Is this book yesterday’s story, given that the world seems to have moved on, with the Cardinal himself? And in the light of Windschuttle’s earlier, equally forensic, outstanding work? Not on your nellie. There is still business to be done here. And the more that the whole ludicrous yet awful affair is re-told, with new twists, the greater our chances of getting Pell’s accusers in the (literal or metaphorical) dock this side of their graves.

Henderson’s many critics often are reduced to invective when attempting to deal with his endlessly measured approach to journalism and truth-telling. He clearly triggers many people. But he triggers the right people, and we should be eternally grateful, as no doubt Cardinal Pell is, that he is in our corner.

Paul Collits is a frequent contributor to Quadrant and Quadrant Online