Cardinal George Pell - Acquittal and Continued Hysteria [2]

Cardinal George Pell during his interview with Andrew Bolt after Acquittal

This is a follow up to my article "Cardinal George Pell and His Accusers [1]"

[1] Andrew Bolt and Cardinal Pell

Andrew Bolt is described on Wikipedia as an Australian conservative social and political commentator and "a controversial public figure, who has frequently been criticised for his alleged abrasive demeanour and accused of inappropriate remarks on various political and social issues". 

In 2019, Bolt defended Cardinal George Pell, who had been convicted of child sexual abuse, saying that "I am not a Catholic or even a Christian. He is a scapegoat, not a child abuser." He also stated that "In my opinion, this is our own OJ Simpson case, but in reverse. A man was found guilty not on the facts but on prejudice. ... Cardinal George Pell has been falsely convicted of sexually abusing two boys in their early teens. That's my opinion, based on the evidence." He went on to say that the successful prosecutions case was "flimsy" and that the conviction was the result of a "vicious" smear that formed part of a "sinister" campaign against the cardinal, adding that Pell was being made to "pay for the sins made by his church". Bolt reiterated his support for Pell when the appeal against Pell's conviction was dismissed in Victoria's Court of Appeal. 

According to the Wikipedia article "Bolt was ultimately correct in his assessment of Pell's case; on 7 April 2020, the High Court of Australia quashed Pell's convictions and determined that verdicts of acquittal be entered in place of all previous verdicts. On 14 April 2020, Bolt exclusively interviewed Cardinal George Pell following his unanimous acquittal."

On 8 April 2020, the Herald Sun (Melbourne) published an article by Andrew Bolt: "When will this mob mentality end for George Pell?" with subheading: Many still refuse to accept the High Court’s ruling that cleared Cardinal George Pell of raping two boys in an open room in his busy cathedral, but a long list of previous allegations against Pell that painted him as evil were plainly false or incredible 

Bolt asks "How many claims against Cardinal George Pell must collapse before people realise a Salem-like group hysteria may be at work? Many still refuse to accept the High Court’s ruling on Tuesday that cleared Pell of raping two boys at once in a room in his busy cathedral. Never mind that one boy, now dead, said he wasn’t raped. Never mind that Pell couldn’t have got to the room at the only time it was empty."

He provides a list of previous allegations against Pell that were plainly false or incredible.

“A”
Police charged Pell with repeatedly raping A when the boy was at the St Joseph’s Children’s Home. A said Pell raped him during a screening of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and no one in the cinema noticed when he screamed. He claimed Pell also took him from the home and raped him at a playground, on the altar of the school’s chapel and at Mt Buninyong. Pell allegedly caused bleeding which A’s foster mother had checked out by a GP.
In fact, records show A didn’t live at the home in one of the years relating to the allegations. The film had screened in September and October the year before, and his foster mother and GP remembered no blood or suggestion of rape. And Pell was not on the staff of the home. The charges were dismissed at the committal hearing.

“B”
B claimed Pell molested him at a Ballarat pool while throwing him from his shoulders. Milligan* devoted an entire 7.30 program to them. In a committal hearing, B said “I don’t remember saying that” when asked why Milligan recorded him saying Pell had touched his genitals when drying him, and also getting him to touch Pell’s. He agreed this would be a “lie”, but he might have said it because he’d had “massive mental health issues”, being “in the middle of a complete meltdown” involving “drink, drugs”. Prosecutors dropped the case before trial.

*[Louise Milligan investigative reporter for the ABC TV Four Corners program; covered the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Abuse. Won awards for her exclusive stories for the ABC TV 7.30 program on the allegations against George Pell and for her 2017 book "Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of George Pell". "Milligan is Irish-born and was raised a devoted Catholic" ! 

On 30 June 2017 her publisher Melbourne University Press (MUP) issued a statement: MUP is taking all reasonable measures to withdraw Cardinal: the Rise and Fall of George Pell by Louise Milligan from sale in Victoria now that Cardinal Pell has been charged. The book had only been launched on 17 May 2017 by Martin Foley MP Minister for Housing in the Victorian Legislative Assembly who  "gave a passionate, heartfelt speech about the culture of the Catholic Church and the stories of human suffering and endurance in the book."  ]

“C”
C saw Milligan’s report on B and then said Pell also molested him at the pool. But when asked in court to explain what happened, C offered answers such as “whatever you think works” or “no comment”. The magistrate called C an “unsatisfactory witness” and dismissed the case.

“D”
A witness told the royal commission on child sex abuse he’d warned Pell in Ballarat of an abusive priest. Pell’s passport showed he was actually living and studying in Europe.

DAVID RIDSDALE
David Ridsdale, later revealed as a past child abuser himself, claimed Pell had tried to bribe him to stop him telling police he’d been abused by his uncle, notorious paedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale.
But counsel assisting the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse said it was “not likely” Pell would have thought it necessary to bribe Ridsdale to shut up since Ridsdale had already said he wanted a private process. Besides, Pell knew Ridsdale had already spoken to police.

“E”
One man claimed he’d been an altar boy at a funeral mass in Ballarat and overheard Pell joke about Gerald Ridsdale to a fellow priest: “Haha, I think Gerry’s been r..ting boys again.”
Counsel assisting the royal commission agreed there’d actually been no such Mass then, and the second priest, who denied all this happened, had been living in Horsham at the time.

“F”
F claimed Pell abused him while regularly supervising showers at Ballarat’s Nazareth House, where Pell also took religious services.
But Pell’s defence team told a committal hearing Pell was a chaplain at another home. The current regional superior of the Sisters of Nazareth says Pell had never been to that home at the time.

[2] New George Pell Child Abuse Allegations  'Stink to High Heaven' 

 Just before his interview with the Cardinal on 14 April  Sky News host Andrew Bolt said fresh allegations of sexual abuse levelled against Cardinal George Pell “stink to high heaven” as he called for an inquiry into Victoria Police. Victoria Police has launched a new investigation into child abuse allegations against Cardinal Pell dating back to the 1970s. Mr Bolt said police had tried to jail Cardinal Pell dozens of times in the past and failed because the allegations were “ludicrous” and “poorly investigated”. “Bear this in mind, police have tried 26 times to jail George Pell using nine different alleged victims that it advertised for to come forward, a process that is highly suspect in itself,” he said. “Every single one of those cases failed. “And not because the organs of the state were defending Pell, they were against him, but because those allegations turned out to be so ludicrous, so poorly investigated, so weak that every one of them crumbled in the police’s hands.” 

Mr Bolt said revelations of the fresh allegations were a “leak” from a police force under scrutiny for its failings. “This stinks to high heaven – there has to be an inquiry into Victoria police,” he said. “This was one of the most incredible witch hunts we’ve ever seen. “This is one of the great disgraces, great misjustices in our history and a moment of shame for many journalists who joined the pack, ignored the evidence, let their prejudice dictate their fidelity to the truth and were found wanting.” 

During the interview Cardinal Pell said. 'I believe in free speech. I acknowledge the right of those who differ from me to just state their views. But in a national broadcaster, to have an overwhelming presentation of one view and only one view, that's a betrayal of the national interest.' 

[3] George Pell: Fairness Trampled by Media Mob

The article by Gerald Henderson in the Weekend Australian (11 April 2020) is actually entitled Fairness Trampled by Social Media Mob However the term "social media"does not adequately describe the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and numerous main-stream journalists [AND famous Australian author (of Schindler's List) Thomas Keneally ]

Henderson writes:
The fact is that no defendant in modern Australia has been subjected to such a media pile-on as Pell. The attack included journalists, commentators and entertainers who were, in fact, Pell antagonists. The list includes (in alphabetical order) Richard Ackland, Paul Bongiorno, Barrie Cassidy, Richard Carleton, Peter FitzSimons, Ray Hadley, Derryn Hinch, David Marr, Louise Milligan, Tim Minchin, Lucie Morris-Marr, Jack Waterford and more besides.

The ABC led the campaign in programs such as 7.30, Four Corners, Lateline (as it then was), Q&A, News Breakfast and Radio National Breakfast.

There was also Nine’s 60 Minutes, Ten’s The Project, and Nine Entertainment newspapers The Age, and The Sydney Morning Herald, plus Guardian Australia, The New Daily and The Saturday Paper. Some of the papers occasionally contained articles by disinterested commentators.

There have been other media campaigns in contentious criminal cases, most notably in the case of Colin Campbell Ross, who was hanged in Melbourne Gaol in 1922 after he was found guilty of the rape and murder of a 12-year-old girl. He was pardoned posthumously in 2008. Then there is the trial and conviction in 1982 of Lindy Chamberlain for the murder of her baby daughter. Her conviction was quashed in 1988.

And then there’s the Pell case. The crusade against Australia’s most senior Catholic was accentuated by the fact his trial took place when media reportage and commentary had been amplified by social media. Jurors are no longer locked up during trials and they are allowed to retain their phones. No court can guarantee jurors will not follow a case online...

In view of this, there is a responsibility on the media to behave professionally while providing information to the public.

This did not happen with respect to Pell. In fact, Melbourne University Press brought forward the planned publication of ABC journalist Milligan’s book Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of ­George Pell to before his trial first began in June 2017. Milligan led the “Get Pell” cause when, in July 2016, 7.30 devoted an entire program to the issue. Today, the ABC is standing by Milligan and Milligan is standing by her book.

This despite the fact it essentially accuses Pell of two sets of offences that have never been established.

The first, concerning crimes that allegedly took place in Melbourne’s St Patrick’s Cathedral in 1996, was the subject of the High Court’s decision to free Pell on Tuesday. The court found that “there is a significant possibility … that an innocent person has been convicted”.

Milligan’s second essential claim, that Pell assaulted two boys in Ballarat’s Eureka Swimming Pool in the early 1970s, was withdrawn by the Victorian Director of Public Prosecutions. Yet Milligan’s book is essentially a case for the prosecution which, in the final analysis, failed.

The lesson seems to be: once a Pell antagonist, always a Pell ­antagonist. Some ABC operatives who attacked Pell before and after his trial appear determined not to change their minds after the High Court decision. On Tuesday, ABC One Plus One presenter Cassidy tweeted about Pell that “the High Court has found there was not enough evidence to convict; it did not find him innocent”.

In fact, ­appellant courts do not find individuals innocent. An acquittal is as far as the High Court goes in such cases......

Then there is the wider problem of media-inspired collective guilt. In his foreword to Cardinal, author Tom Keneally focused on Pell’s (alleged) responsibility for “the victims of churchmen”. 

Now, none of Pell’s supporters deny the crimes of some priests and brothers, especially since Pell was one of the first church leaders to take action against clerical child sexual abuse. The point is that Pell was not charged with the crimes of churchmen. He was charged with respect to two specific matters — and was acquitted by the highest court in the land.

The reality of the media pile-on and the concept of collective guilt threatens the criminal justice system, especially in Victoria where there is no right to trial by judge alone.

[4] Pell Conviction a Blow to Conservatives, says Thomas Keneally [of Schindler's List fame]

In March 2019, the UK  Anglican "Church Times" published an article regarding Australian author (and former seminarian) Tom Keneally's attitude to the conviction of Cardinal Pell, the previous December . The title is highly significant "Pell conviction a blow to conservatives, says Keneally"

The Roman Catholic Church in Australia will have to change in the wake of Cardinal George Pell’s conviction for child sexual abuse Thomas Keneally said. He questioned, however, whether its bishops are capable of initiating the change. Mr Keneally expressed doubt whether the Church was capable of empowering the “good men”, whom he defined as priests who were close to the people and who knew what to do.

“The Church can’t get by on the letter of the law any more — the idea that the Church is a fortress to be defended by warriors who have, at best, enabled [abuse], and, at worst, themselves abused children,” he said. The bishops “have to free up the good men, or else, because we can’t be peasants any more, bowing down to bishops”.

[Mr Keneally’s 2016 novel Crimes of the Father dealt with clerical abuse, its effects, and its subsequent cover-up and the Church Times article referred to their Interview with him on 16 June 2017 and their review of the book 23 June 2017].
He described Cardinal Pell as an arrogant and narcissistic warrior who had not evinced any sympathy for survivors of clergy sexual abuse, and spoke of being “profoundly shocked” by the Cardinal’s conviction on five counts of abusing two choirboys in the 1990s while holding office as Archbishop of Melbourne. 

Interestingly the article also quotes the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, the Most Revd Anthony Fisher who urged the faithful not to be too quick to judge Cardinal Pell. “If we are too quick to judge, we can end up joining the demonisers or the apologists, those baying for blood or those in denial,” he said.

Mr Keneally remarks: “None of us knows enough to know whether he is actually guilty or innocent — but he did have the best trial that money could buy.” Mr Keneally was “amused” that “neo-conservatives are speaking as if this court decision is only temporary, and that the appeal will be the real trial.” These conservative commentators, “people who see mortal sins everywhere”, are “unwilling to move on what is a huge crime both in legal and theological terms”, he said.

If Cardinal Pell’s conviction is a blow for the conservative wing of the RC Church, it is also a blow for political and cultural conservatives in Australia, Mr Keneally said. “He has been a leading figure for the commentariat in the Murdoch press, at a time when neo-conservatism is going out of fashion in Australia, thank goodness.”
He “stood against gays, stem-cell research, the ordination of women, and divorcees”, and raised only a “muted” response to the Australian Government’s “heinous” asylum-seeker policies, besides supporting climate-change denial, Mr Keneally said.

Among the evidence presented to the court during the pre-sentence hearing were character references from two former Australian Liberal Party Prime Ministers, John Howard and Tony Abbott, both conservatives. In his reference, Mr Howard said that Cardinal Pell had “frequently displayed much courage, and held to his values and beliefs, irrespective of the prevailing wisdom of the time”. In his view, the Cardinal had “dedicated his life to his nation and his Church”. This reference, which has attracted much public criticism, showed that the Cardinal was seen by conservative forces as a national political figure, Mr Keneally said.

MY Comment: 
I note from the Church Times book review of "Crimes of the Father" that Thomas Keneally is  "of Irish-Australian Roman Catholic stock" and allegedly "is still a hard-hitting opponent of powerful systems, this time the Roman Catholic Church". Like Louise Milligan then! Both are  "opponents of powerful systems" in much the same way that critics of German Jews were, during the Weimar Republic!

Or alternatively this is Victor Serge in "Memoirs of a Revolutionary" describing his failed attempt to get the League for the Rights of Man to condemn Stalin's Show Trials in the 1930s:

And in every country of the civilized world, learned and “progressive” jurists were to be found who thought these proceedings to be correct and convincing.  It was turning into a tragic lapse of the whole modern conscience.  In France the League for the Rights of Man, with a reputation going back to Dreyfus, had a jurist of this variety in its midst.  The League’s executive was divided into a majority that opposed any investigation, and an outraged minority that eventually resigned.  The argument generally put forward amounted to:  “Russia is our ally…”  It was imbecilic reasoning – there is more than a hint of suicide about an international alliance that turns into moral and political servility – but it worked powerfully.

[5] Conclusion and Similarities with Ireland (& Dreyfus!)

In my previous article "Cardinal George Pell and His Accusers" I noted similarities between the witch-hunt against Cardinal Pell and the case of former Irish Sister of Mercy Nora Wall (and her co-accused Pablo McCabe) in Ireland. 

Nora Wall was accused of child rape in 1996 shortly after Irish State broadcast company RTE transmitted the bogus "documentary" Dear Daughter  containing the allegations of Christine Buckley against the Sisters. [UK cultural historian Richard Webster wrote about it here ]. Nora was convicted in 1999 shortly after RTE broadcast an equally bogus three-part documentary series produced by Mary Raftery that attacked Irish religious orders in general. [My 2005 correspondence with Irish Times editor Geraldine Kennedy regarding Mary Raftery is here ]. 

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) played a similar role in the witch-hunt against Cardinal Pell. Louise Milligan and Thomas Keneally could be regarded as the Australian equivalents of Christine Buckley and Mary Raftery! 

In December 2018 Cardinal Pell was convicted of sexually abusing two boys, one of whom had died in 2014, had never made a complaint of abuse and had specifically told his mother that the Cardinal had not abused him. Cardinal Pell was convicted on the word of the other boy who said both were abused together in St Patrick's Cathedral Melbourne in 1996. This ludicrous verdict mirrored that against Nora Wall and Pablo McCabe who faced two separate rape allegations at their 1999 trial. In relation to the first charge, the Defense were able to prove that McCabe could not have been there on the date in question - the 12th birthday of the accuser on 8 January 1990. Nothing deterred, the jury found the two accused Not Guilty on that count but Guilty on the second rape charge for which neither day nor year was specified (thus making an alibi impossible).

In both Ireland and Australia, politicians took the side of the false accusers - BUT the behaviour of the Australians was somewhat less vile than their Irish counterparts. As per a Daily Mail article on 7 April titled 'I believe you': Premier Dan Andrews issues a cutting statement after George Pell is acquitted of sexually assaulting two choirboys 
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews has issued a cutting statement after the High Court quashed Cardinal George Pell's conviction for sexually abusing two choirboys. ... Mr Andrews released his statement a short time later, it read: 'I make no comment about today's High Court decision. But I have a message for every single victim and survivor of child sex abuse: 'I see you. I hear you. I believe you.'   [ But last year:
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews said Cardinal George Pell had received a fair trial and questioned media commentators who said the jury had made an error in its decision. “The notion that if you don’t like a verdict, you can just say they got it wrong, that’s not how ours system works,” the Premier said. “What’s happened here … is that a victim has been believed. And that’s thrown a whole lot of people into absolute disarray,” he told ABC Melbourne’s Jon Faine.]

In Ireland the man who is currently Minister for Justice and Equality used Parliamentary Privilege in 2009 to again denounce Nora Wall - specifically by repeating a libel for which she had received an apology and damages from the Sunday World in 2002. She had also received a Certificate of Miscarriage of Justice from the Court of Criminal Appeal in December 2005 - but Charlie Flanagan knew he could not be sued for what he said in the Dail (Irish Parliament). I have written about Charlie Flanagan here. (He became Minister for Justice in June 2017. I don't think anyone actually believed his lies about Nora Wall but - as in Australia - Irish political culture is infinitely forgiving of politicians who libel the Catholic Church!)

The Dreyfus Affair

In section 4, I mentioned Victor Serge and his reference to the "Dreyfus Affair" - a famous late 19th century political and anti-Semitic scandal in France. I'm pleased to see that George Weigel makes a similar comparison in relation to Cardinal Pell (article "Justice, finally" in Catholic World Report:

As I have written before, the vicious public atmosphere surrounding Cardinal Pell, especially in his native State of Victoria, was analogous to the poisonous atmosphere that surrounded the Dreyfus Affair in late-nineteenth century France. In 1894, raw politics and ancient score-settling, corrupt officials, a rabid media, and gross religious prejudice combined to cashier an innocent French army officer of Jewish heritage, Captain Alfred Dreyfus, for treason, after which he was condemned to the hell of Devil’s Island.

The Melbourne Assessment Prison and Her Majesty’s Prison Barwon, the two facilities in which George Pell has been incarcerated, are not Devil’s Island, to be sure. But many of the same factors that led to the false conviction of Alfred Dreyfus were at play in the putrid public atmosphere of the State of Victoria during the past four years of the Pell witchhunt. The Victoria police, already under scrutiny for incompetence and corruption, conducted a fishing expedition that sought “evidence” for crimes that no one had previously alleged to have been committed; and by some accounts, the police saw the persecution of George Pell as a useful way to deflect attention from their own (to put it gently) problems.

With a few honorable exceptions, the local and national press bayed for Cardinal Pell’s blood. Someone paid for the professionally printed anti-Pell placards carried by the mob that surrounded the courthouse where the trials were conducted. And the Australian Broadcasting Corporation—a taxpayer-funded public institution—engaged in the crudest anti-Catholic propaganda and broadcast a stream of defamations of Cardinal Pell’s character (most recently in a series coinciding with the deliberations of the High Court).

And finally I'm going to repeat what Victor Serge wrote in "Memoirs of a Revolutionary" describing his failed attempt to get the League for the Rights of Man to condemn Stalin's Show Trials:

And in every country of the civilized world, learned and “progressive” jurists were to be found who thought these proceedings to be correct and convincing.  It was turning into a tragic lapse of the whole modern conscience.  In France the League for the Rights of Man, with a reputation going back to Dreyfus, had a jurist of this variety in its midst.  The League’s executive was divided into a majority that opposed any investigation, and an outraged minority that eventually resigned.  The argument generally put forward amounted to:  “Russia is our ally…”  It was imbecilic reasoning – there is more than a hint of suicide about an international alliance that turns into moral and political servility – but it worked powerfully.