Those of us who still believe the legal system's traditions help preserve us from barbarism can only hope the B-grade spectacle we have witnessed so many times in the persecution of George Pell is an aberration, not a portent of some squalid future

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Why was the second verdict by the jury in the trials of George Pell so different from the first? If the jury in both cases was a fair sample of the Australian public, and the evidence heard by both juries was identical, you would expect the outcomes to be fairly similar. Like the first, the […]

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The worst moment in Julia Gillard’s life must have come in 1996 when she was involved in a corruption scandal and forced to resign as a partner in Melbourne law firm Slater & Gordon. Her then boyfriend, Bruce Wilson, had been diverting funds, which employers thought they were paying to the Australian Workers Union, into […]

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How to explain the 10-2 vote for acquittal at George Pell's first trial and the 12-0 verdict to convict at the second? Look to the nation's front pages sixteen days before that second proceeding began. 'We believe you' was the meme as Morrison and Shorten apologised to the claimants. Could there have been a more effective way to taint the second jury's perceptions?

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Preceded by media slanders and abetted by leaks from police, lawyers and activists, the process that convicted George Pell set a precedent that signals his fate will be far more than a one-off misadventure. In the current climate of sexual politics, it is bound to be a model for the persecution of many others

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“Billy” was a 10-year-old student at St. Jerome School in 1998, and an altar boy just like his older brother before him. A sweet, gentle kid with boyish good looks, Billy was outgoing and well-liked. One morning, after serving Mass, Rev. Charles Engelhardt caught Billy in the church sacristy sipping leftover wine. Rather than get […]

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Uncanny similarities between the testimony of George Pell’s accuser in Melbourne and claims made about another alleged incident in Philadelphia four years before cannot be explained by mere coincidence. They raise serious doubts about the witness’s veracity

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When Sydney University awarded Peter the degree of Doctor of Letters, its citation acknowledged his contribution “to the intellectual life of Australia and to its world of letters for more than fifty years”. True as those words were, they remain an understatement

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Australian juries are no longer what they once were. The guilty verdict in the George Pell case was not decided by balancing scales of evidence and reason and delivering a finding beyond a reasonable doubt. Other influences were at work

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Australian juries are no longer what they once were. The guilty verdict in the George Pell case was not decided by balancing scales of evidence and reason and delivering a finding beyond a reasonable doubt. Other influences were at work

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