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Cardinal George Pell |
George Pell was Archbishop of Melbourne, Australia from 1996 to 2001 and Archbishop of Sydney from 2001 to 2014. He was created Cardinal by Pope John Paul II in 2003. He is the Catholic Church's most senior official to be convicted of child sexual abuse. In June 2017, Cardinal Pell was charged in Victoria with multiple historical sexual assault offences; he denied all charges. On 11 December 2018 he was found guilty on five charges related to sexual assault of two 13-year old boys while Archbishop of Melbourne in the 1990s. Pell lodged an appeal against his conviction to the Victorian Court of Appeal, which dismissed Pell's appeal by a majority of two to one in August 2019. (Justice Mark Weinberg strongly dissented from the other two). On 13 November 2019, the High Court of Australia granted Cardinal George Pell special leave to appeal his convictions. The appeal is to be held in March 2020.
The High Court acquitted Cardinal Pell of all charges on a unanimous verdict by all 7 judges. I am doing a second article Cardinal George Pell - Acquittal and Continued Hysteria [2].
(A) Parallels with Ireland (and UK)
At least eight Irish Bishops (including all four Archbishops) have been subjected to false allegations related to child sex abuse - either of being pedophiles themselves or of covering up child sex abuse. This includes the late Cardinal Archbishop Cahal Daly who was Primate of All Ireland and John Charles McQuaid, Primate of Ireland and the best known Irish Catholic churchman of the 20th century. I wrote about this in 2017 in a comment on an article in America Magazine concerning Cardinal Pell [see section (E) below]. There is a more up to date version hereEight Falsely Accused Bishops (and Archbishops) in Ireland
There are also similarities with the case of former Sister of Mercy Nora Wall who was found guilty on a second charge of raping a child even though the initial charge was clearly bogus - and the jury acquitted on that count. (The entire case then collapsed due to the stupidly of the accusers in giving a post-conviction interview to a newspaper that exposed both as serial accusers!) Cardinal Pell was convicted on the unsupported testimony of one accuser even though several previous allegations against him had been found to be false. [see section (D) ]
Hysteria generated by the media played a major role for Nora Wall and Cardinal Pell. An Irish Times editorial on 17 December 2005 entitled "Nora Wall" stated that: The charges were laid at a time when allegations of the abuse of children in institutions had entered the public domain. The case was heard within a month of the broadcast by RTÉ of the [3 part] States of Fear programmes. The jury could not but have been affected, it seems, by the horrific abuse exposed in that series and by the complaints of the child victims that no-one listened to them. Cardinal Pell was likewise subjected to a vicious media assault for years before his trial in 2018. [See section (B) ]
In addition to being convicted a few weeks after the States of Fear series, Nora Wall and Pablo McCabe were initially accused within months of the broadcast of RTE's broadcast of a different bogus documentary "Dear Daughter". As per Wikipedia on Nora Wall:
In February 1996 RTÉ broadcast "Dear Daughter" – Louis Lentin's TV documentary about alleged abuse in St Vincent’s residential school, Goldenbridge, Dublin, which was run by the Sisters of Mercy. It featured the story of Christine Buckley who had been there in the 1950s.The documentary concentrated on allegations made against one Mercy nun Sister Xavieria. The programme claimed that, on one occasion, Christine Buckley had been caned by Sister Xavieria so severely that the entire side of her leg was split open from her hip to her knee. She said that she was treated in the casualty department of the local hospital and believes that she received 80 to 120 stitches.
No medical evidence has ever been produced to support this claim.The surgeon who ran the casualty department at the hospital has made a statement which renders it highly unlikely that such an incident ever took place. The surgeon pointed out that caning would not have caused a wound of this kind, which would have required surgical treatment under a general anaesthetic and not stitches in a casualty department.
Yet the allegations against the Sisters of Mercy were widely believed at the time. In his essay "States of Fear, the Redress Board and Ireland's Folly", UK cultural historian Richard Webster states that "in the wake of the broadcast, atrocity stories about Goldenbridge and other industrial schools began to proliferate".
There is also a clear parallel with Operation Midland in the UK, a hysterical child abuse witch-hunt conducted by the Metropolitan police in London from 2014-16. In this case the motive was Class Hatred rather than the Anti-Clerical variety and the targets were leading Tories (Conservatives) or "Cultural Tories" rather than Catholic Bishops. As per Wikipedia:
Once Operation Midland was underway, the police began their focus on the men whom [Carl] Beech had implicated as being members of a VIP paedophile ring – amongst those he had named included the former Members of Parliament Harvey Proctor and Greville Janner, the former Home Secretary Leon Brittan, the former Prime Minister Edward Heath, the former Chief of the Defence Staff Lord Bramall, the former Director of the Secret Intelligence Service Maurice Oldfield, and the former Director-General of MI5 Michael Hanley.
In July 2019 false accuser Carl Beech was sentenced to 18 years in prison on 12 counts of perverting the cause of justice and one of fraud. It was by no means a typical ending to a false allegations saga and it may mark a turning point in the UK!
(B) Demonised by "Liberal" Media because of Catholic Orthodoxy
According to Bill Donohue President of the Catholic League in The War Against Cardinal Pell (20 July 2017)We know one thing for sure: Pell was demonized when he offered his account [to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse]. Indeed, as a reporter for one Australian newspaper put it, he has “appeared at a parliamentary inquiry and a royal commission and before an audience of abuse survivors who reflexively hiss, howl and heckle.” Yet he always honors requests to speak.....
Few Australian reporters have been as dogged as Andrew Bolt in covering the Pell story; he writes for the Herald Sun. He has long noted the media bias against Pell. In 2016, he wrote, “There is something utterly repulsive about the media’s persecution of George Pell. There is something also very frightening about this abuse of power.” On July 3, 2017, Bolt said, “The media commentary suggests there’s little chance Cardinal George Pell can get a fair trial.” What concerns him is the temptation to make someone in the Church hierarchy pay for the sins of others. “He himself may be innocent,” Bolt says, “yet could be punished as a scapegoat.”
Amanda Vanstone is not a friend of organized religion, but in her coverage in the Sydney Morning Herald she noted that “What we are seeing is no better than a lynch mob from the dark ages.” She adds that “The public arena is being used to trash a reputation and probably prevent a fair trial.” She freely admits that she and Pell have “widely divergent views on a number of matters,” but having “differing views isn’t meant to be a social death warrant for the one with the least popular views."........
The principal reason why Pell is hated is because he is a larger-than-life Australian cleric who strongly supports the Church’s teachings on sexuality. Quite frankly, he is an inviting target in a land where expressions of anti-Catholic bigotry are ascendant. Carl E. Olson writes in the Catholic World Report that “much of Australia seems to have held on rather tightly to its suspicion, dislike, and even hatred of the Catholic Church.” Olson quotes one of his Aussie correspondents. “The Australian leftist establishment hates him, the gay lobby hates him, the atheists, liberal Catholics and feminist ideologues hold him in contempt and he has taken on the Italian mafia in trying to reform the Vatican finances."
(C) Justice Mark Weinberg (Victoria Court of Appeal) Dissents regarding Pell's Conviction
[Paul Kelly is Editor-at-Large on "The Australian" and a former Editor-in-Chief. On 24 August 2019 The Australian published his article "How Faith Was Lost on Judgment Day for a State Legal System"]Justice Mark Weinberg’s dissent is long and closely reasoned, ensuring grave doubts about Pell’s guilt will not be dissipated by the 2-1 verdict against him.
The 2-1 Victorian Court of Appeal dismissal of George Pell’s appeal against his sexual offences convictions may settle Pell’s guilt in the eyes of the law, but this contested judgment cannot constitute an enduring settlement or convincing argument in relation to Pell’s guilt.
It is an extraordinary judgment. The power, logic and suasion lies in the 200-page minority judgment by Mark Weinberg, a former commonwealth director of public prosecutions and the most experienced of the three judges in criminal law. Weinberg’s dissent is long and closely reasoned. Weinberg has ensured that grave doubts about Pell’s guilt will not be dissipated by the 2-1 verdict against him.
Weinberg has undermined the assumptions of the prosecution case as accepted by Chief Justice Anne Ferguson and Justice Chris Maxwell, president of the Court of Appeal. Given this minority judgment, Pell’s legal team is likely to take recourse to the High Court.
In upholding Pell’s appeal and in the arguments he made, Weinberg raises the implication an innocent man is being convicted and this, in turn, raises far wider questions. Can the public have faith in the criminal justice system of Victoria? The majority case, obviously, must be accepted. But a reading of the entire judgment suggests the majority case is flawed and less convincing than the minority.
The Pell trial has never been about the egregious crimes of the Catholic Church in relation to sexual abuse of children. It is about only one issue: whether Pell is a sexual predator. Yet these two elements seem difficult, almost impossible, to separate, and this tension seems embedded in the legal process and Court of Appeal decision.
On May 9 last year [2018] on the occasion of Weinberg’s retirement from the Supreme Court and appointment as a reserve judge, Paul Holdenson QC gave the address and began with these words: “Your Honour was undoubtedly the best criminal appellate advocate of your generation.” Given that unassailable testimony, Weinberg’s judgment warrants substantial evaluation. It cannot be ignored.
Weinberg goes to the narrow basis of the prosecution case: “In the present case the prosecution relied entirely upon the evidence of the complainant to establish guilt and nothing more. There was no supporting evidence of any kind from any other witness. Indeed, there was no supporting evidence of any kind at all. These convictions were based upon the jury’s assessment of the complainant as a witness and nothing more.
“Mr Boyce (for the prosecution) in his submission to this court did not shrink from that having been the entire prosecution case at trial. Indeed, as indicated, he invited the members of the court to approach this ground of appeal in exactly the same way. He asked this court to focus upon the complainant’s demeanour in assessing his credibility and reliability and to treat that matter as decisive.
“In my view, Mr Walker (acting for Pell) was justified in submitting that the complainant did, at times, embellish aspects of his account. On occasion, he seemed almost to ‘clutch at straws’ in an attempt to minimise, or overcome, the obvious inconsistencies between what he had said on earlier occasions and what the objective evidence clearly showed.”
These judgments cannot be separated from the social upheaval as exposed by the 2017 Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse that documented extensive crimes of sexual abuse by institutions, notably the Catholic Church, serial cover-ups, abuses of power and refusal to believe the victims when they came forward.
The royal commission correctly condemned the criminal justice system for being “ineffective in responding to crimes of sexual violence”, with Justice Peter McClellan praising the victims, saying: “They deserve our nation’s thanks.” Late last year Scott Morrison captured the essence of the transformation with his apology to the victims, saying: “I believe you, we believe you, your country believes you.”
And the judicial majority believed the victim against Pell. The prosecution depended on the complainant’s testimony, delivered by video in the first trial. Because it was recorded and used in the second trial there was no second cross-examination. No other evidence was required, no witnesses, no corroboration. The Ferguson-Maxwell majority had no doubt. They accepted the prosecution argument that the complainant “came across as someone who was telling the truth” — that he “was clearly not a liar, was not a fantasist and was a witness of truth”.
His word was accepted over that of Pell and the substantial body of evidence produced by Pell’s legal team. That team outlined in evidence 13 factual obstacles in the path of conviction with the Ferguson-Maxwell majority rejecting all 13.
One lawyer close to these events told me: “The word of complainants is now regarded as near infallible.” During the trial various inconsistencies by the complainant were explained away by the prosecution as the established reactions by sexual abuse victims.
Consider the facts. The facts are that complainant A made a complaint to police in June 2015 about an alleged abuse committed by Pell 19 years earlier in 1996 against two 13-year-old choristers. The complainant claimed two incidents. The first happened after Pell served Sunday solemn mass at St Patrick’s Cathedral when he found the two boys in the priests’ sacristy. There was no evidence Pell had spoken to the boys before.
The prosecution said Pell, in his robes, said something like: “What are you doing in here?” Pell then allegedly immediately undid his trousers, pulled out his penis and forced B’s head close to his genitalia. This took place for barely a minute or two. Pell then allegedly turned to A and forced his penis into A’s mouth. This incident did not last any more than two minutes. Pell then instructed A to remove his pants and more abuse occurred for another minute or two. The boys were reported to be sobbing and whimpering.
A did not complain to anyone on the ride home or afterwards, nor did he ever discuss the alleged abuse with B. The second boy, B, died in 2014 having never made any complaint. When asked by his mother, B said he had never been interfered with. [My emphasis]
In Weinberg’s judgment, he refers to the argument made by Pell’s barrister, Robert Richter, in his final address to the jury reminding them “there were literally dozens of people, including a number of adults who would have been congregating around the area of the priests’ sacristy shortly after the conclusion of Sunday solemn mass. Anyone could have walked into that room at any time and immediately seen what was going on …
“It would be extraordinary to think that he would have offended in the manner described by the complainant with the door even partly open. In addition, there was nothing to have prevented either of the boys from leaving the room while the other was being attacked. There was nothing to suggest that the applicant (Pell) had previously been acquainted with either of them. There was no suggestion that he had engaged in any grooming. There was no evidence that the applicant had ever threatened either boy. Nor had he said to them that they were not to tell anyone what had occurred.”
Moreover, by abusing two boys at once it meant if one made a complaint the other could corroborate it. Richter said only a “madman” would have attempted such abuse immediately after Sunday mass.
The second alleged abuse is even more extraordinary. Complainant A said at least a month after the first incident, again following a Sunday mass at the cathedral, he was processing with the choir back through the sacristy corridor when Pell pushed himself against A on a wall and squeezed A’s testicles and penis over his robes. Pell did not say anything. A did not tell B about this incident.
Weinberg said: “Mr Richter submitted that the complainant’s account of this second incident was so highly improbable as to be incapable of acceptance. The idea that a six-foot four-inch fully robed archbishop in the presence of a number of choristers, including at least several adults, as well as some concelebrant priests, would attack a young choirboy in a public place, push him violently against a wall, grab him hard by the testicles and squeeze for several seconds to the point of inflicting considerable pain upon the complainant was said to border on the fanciful.”
Weinberg resorts to the trial transcript:
Richter: Yes, and out of nowhere the archbishop physically assaults you. Is that what you say?
Complainant: Yes.
Richter: In front of all these people?
Complainant: Yes … Yes. And it happened like that. It was such a quick, um, quick and cold, callous kind of thing that happened. It was — it was over before it even started and it was — I was isolated in a corner for literally seconds. Um, there were people sporadically walking down the hallway and um I was obviously not being looked at, at that time, because somebody would have, hopefully would have reported it.
Richter: So the archbishop in his full — oh you said and, of course, the choir numbered what, about 50 people?
Complainant: I would say so.
Richter: And in the middle of that, number of people, the archbishop in his full regalia shoves you against the wall violently, yes?
Complainant: Yes.
Richter: Which hand did he use?
Complainant: I’m not certain.
In relation to the second incident Weinberg was withering in comments going to the integrity of justice in Victoria: “The complainant’s account of the second incident seems to me to take brazenness to new heights, the like of which I have not seen.
“I would have thought any prosecutor would be wary of bringing a charge of this gravity against anyone, based upon the implausible notion that a sexual assault of this kind would take place in public and in the presence of numerous potential witnesses. Had the incident occurred in the way that the complainant alleged, it seems to me highly unlikely that none of those many persons present would have seen what was happening, or reported it in some way.”
The implication cannot be missed: Pell should not have been brought to trial on the second incident, let alone convicted. Weinberg said it was “not open to the jury to be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt” of Pell’s guilt on the second offence.
In reviewing the trials, Weinberg said: “Objectively speaking, this was always going to be a problematic case. The complainant’s allegations against the applicant were, to one degree or another, implausible. In the case of the second incident, even that is an understatement.”
The Ferguson-Maxwell majority saw a different reality. To them, there was nothing in the complainant’s answers to suggest “he had been caught out or had tripped himself up”. Indeed, they saw his uncertainties on issue after issue as “a further indication of A’s credibility”. The majority said the complainant’s explanation of what he could remember and what he could not “had the ring of truth”.
In relation to the second incident they accepted totally the complainant’s version, saying “there was nothing inherently improbable” about his account, and rejected the claim the incident could not have gone unnoticed by others.
In his trial submission Richter said a large number of “independently improbable if not ‘impossible’ things” would need to have had to occur within a very short timeframe (perhaps 10 minutes) “if the complainant’s account of the first incident were true”. A long list followed.
It included evidence by the assistant priest, Charles Portelli, and sacristan, Maxwell Potter, to the effect that they accompanied Pell after mass and that it was, in effect, impossible for him to have found himself alone as described by the complainant. Weinberg said: “Even a mere ‘reasonable possibility’, unrebutted by the prosecution, that what Portelli and Potter said might be both truthful and accurate, would give rise to a complete defence and would necessitate an acquittal.”
He said their evidence in relation to Pell “remaining on the steps after mass was, in substance, ‘alibi’ evidence” concerning the first incident. The judicial majority rejected this. The issue here is whether Pell was in the priests’ sacristy alone and robed for the critical few minutes during which he committed the alleged offences.
The Ferguson-Maxwell judgment said it was “open to the jury” to find the assaults occurred in that five to six minutes before the “hive of activity” described by other witnesses began. They said the jury was entitled to doubts about Portelli’s evidence and, taken as a whole, it did not cast doubts on the complainant’s evidence.
Referring to the defence, Weinberg said: “This trial involved a most detailed and comprehensive challenge to a prosecution case. That attack was largely based upon the unchallenged testimony of a significant number of witnesses, all of whom were of good character, and reputable. It was not suggested that any of them had lied.
“Those who recalled relevant events had good reason to do so. Mr Walker (for Pell) submitted that the evidence that they gave, whether viewed individually or collectively, was more than sufficient to establish that the complainant’s account, in its specific detail, was ‘realistically impossible’. In substance, Mr Walker submitted that this has always been a weak case, built upon an account by the complainant that was itself highly improbable.”
Weinberg said the prosecution did not address Richter’s argument about “compounding improbabilities”.
But he alluded to the heart of the matter by inferring the answer the prosecution would surely give was that the “complainant’s evidence was so compelling, so credible, and reliable that any notion of compounding improbabilities would be overcome”.
In short, all paths lead back to the same place: the complainant must be believed. The prosecution and the appeal majority put much emphasis on the complainant’s demeanour. Weinberg attacked the legal basis behind this.
“The High Court has observed that it can be dangerous to place too much reliance upon the appearance of a witness, rather than focusing, so far as possible, upon other, more objectively reliable matters,” he said. “These might include, for example, contemporary documents, clearly established facts, scientifically approved tests and the apparent logic of the events in question. Empirical evidence has cast serious doubts upon the capacity of any human being to tell the truth from falsehood merely from the observations of a witness giving evidence.”
He referred to research by the Australian Law Reform Commission that “almost universally concluded that facial reaction and bodily behaviour were unlikely to assist in arriving at a valid conclusion about the evidence of most witnesses”. Yet the judicial majority was confident, in the extreme, about its assessment of the complainant’s demeanour saying he “clearly” was telling the truth. No room for doubt there.
Weinberg said the events had taken place 20 years earlier. That alone had to raise questions of memory reliability. When Pell’s team said that B’s denial to his mother of ever being abused should be given weight, the prosecution said it must be put aside entirely — this was now known as characteristic behaviour of victims. [My emphasis]
When Richter challenged the complainant’s failure to have ever discussed the abuse with the other boy, the complainant said they wanted to “purge” it from their systems and the prosecution argued this highly emotional exchange was further evidence of a truthful witness. The prosecution argued the complainant’s evidence had “grown in stature” during the trial and that merely viewing his recording of evidence would, on its own, show why the jury had convicted.
Weinberg was unpersuaded. He said: “Mr Walker (for Pell) submitted that on a fair assessment of the complainant’s evidence, both through reading the transcript and through viewing his recorded testimony, he had frequently adjusted, added to, and indeed embellished the account that he originally gave to police in 2015 … Indeed, on occasion he gave answers that not even he could possibly have believed to be true.
“I am quite unconvinced by Mr Boyce’s submission that the complainant’s evidence was so compelling, either when viewed as a whole, or when regard is had to his distressed response to Mr Richter’s vigorous cross-examination, that I should put aside all of the factors that point to his account as being unreliable.”
Weinberg raised a potential problem for Pell in the trial. Richter’s argument was that the abuse had been impossible in any realistic sense given the evidence. “However, there was a risk that it set a forensic hurdle that the defence never actually had to overcome,” Weinberg said. The onus was on the prosecution to establish guilt beyond reasonable doubt, not on the defence to show it was impossible for the offences to have occurred.
Lindy Chamberlain Case and High Court Justice William Deane
In summary, Weinberg said that Bret Walker SC, acting for Pell, had identified a sufficient body of evidence to cast reasonable doubt on the verdict and that he would set aside the convictions. In conclusion he referred to the Lindy Chamberlain case when Justice William Deane of the High Court would have allowed the appeal from a jury decision.
Deane made the critical distinction — it was not about saying a person was innocent when found guilty; it was about saying the person had not been proven to be guilty according to the test required by the criminal justice system. Deane felt, despite the jury’s verdict, the evidence did not establish Chamberlain’s guilt beyond reasonable doubt.
“I find myself in a position quite similar to that which confronted Deane J,” Weinberg said. He believed there was a “significant possibility” Pell did not commit the offences. That meant he had to be acquitted.
The split Victorian Court of Appeal judgment exposes a split over the law: are complainants about child sexual abuse to be accorded a higher status of believability despite evidence that would normally cast reasonable doubt? The Weinberg judgment raises the most serious questions about the test used not just in Pell’s conviction but about how the law is to be applied.
PAUL KELLY
(D) Other Sex Abuse Allegations Against Cardinal Pell
Bill Donohue President of the Catholic League listed these in a July 2017 article "The War against Cardinal Pell"- [In June 2002] a Melbourne man said he was abused by Pell in 1962 at a camp when he was 12; Pell was studying for the priesthood. The case was thrown out when nothing could be substantiated. Not a single person who worked at the camp supported the charges, and all of the signed statements were favorable to Pell. The accuser had been convicted 39 times for offenses ranging from assault to drug use. Indeed, he was a violent drug addict who served four years in prison. He drove drunk, beat people, and took amphetamines.
- [In 2013] Pell was accused of doing nothing to help an abused Australian boy who pleaded for help in 1969. But Pell’s passport showed that he lived in Rome the entire year. [As per Wikipedia "During the course of the (2013 Victorian Parliamentary) Inquiry, a victim of a paedophile Christian Brother at St Alipius Primary School claimed that in 1969 Pell heard him pleading for help a few weeks after he had been raped. Pell denied the claim, which was later discredited when Pell produced his passport to confirm that he was not living in Australia that year.]
- At a later date, Pell was accused of chasing away a complainant who informed him of a molesting priest. The authorities dismissed the charges after discovering that Pell did not live at the presbytery in Ballarat where the encounter allegedly took place. The accuser was later imprisoned for sexually abusing children. [As per Wikipedia, Pell submitted evidence that he did not live in Ballarat or in that presbytery at the time, and the counsel-assisting noted in her final submission that "Cardinal Pell's evidence about his living arrangements and duties in 1973 and 1974 make it less likely that he was at St Patrick's presbytery late in the afternoon on a week day."]
- In a high profile case, Pell was accused of bribing David Ridsdale to stop making accusations to the police that he was abused by his uncle, Gerald Ridsdale, a notorious molester priest. The accusation was investigated and Pell was exonerated. [As per Wikipedia, Counsel-Assisting Gail Furness conceded in her final submission to the royal commission that, given it was already known to Pell that Gerald Ridsdale was subject to police investigation, and David Ridsdale had requested a "private" rather than police process "it is not likely that Bishop Pell would then have thought it necessary to offer Mr Ridsdale an inducement to prevent him from going to the police or public with his allegations", and Ridsdale could have "misinterpreted Bishop Pell's offer of assistance".]
- Pell was also accused of joking about Gerald Ridsdale’s sexual assaults at a funeral Mass in Ballarat. But there was no Mass that day and the priest whom Pell was allegedly joking with was living someplace else when the supposed incident took place.
(E) Allegations against Irish Archbishops (and a Cardinal!)
I commented on an article in America Magazine "Cardinal Pell Professes Innocence on Sex Abuse Charges" (29 June 2017) pointing out some similarities with the situation in Ireland.There have been numerous false allegations of child abuse against Bishops (including 3 Archbishops and a Cardinal) in Ireland. This is an extract from my comment on a 2011 article on the Association of Catholic Priests website
Two Reflections on Dr. Magee’s Interview. Brendan Hoban and Margaret Lee
[Bishop of Cloyne John Magee resigned in the wake of a claim that he had failed to deal adequately with allegations of child abuse against his priests. ]
Father Hoban
"Regarding the “culture of deference” you are aware that the media have been telling obscene lies about priests and bishops since at least 1994. I have written an essay about false sex allegations directed at SEVEN Irish bishops between 1994 and 2008. These comprise Bishop Magee himself (accused twice in 1994 and 1999), the late Archbishops Cahal Daly, John Charles McQuaid, and Thomas Morris, Bishops Brendan Comiskey and Eamon Casey and the late Bishop Peter Birch.
"You are aware that Bishop Magee himself was the target of the initial libel in April 1994 when the UK Guardian was forced to apologise for claiming that an unnamed Irish Bishop was a member of a paedophile ring.
"A few months afterwards the government of Albert Reynolds collapsed as a direct result of Pat Rabbitte’s suggestion that there was a conspiracy between Cardinal Daly and Attorney General Harry Whelehan to prevent the extradition of Fr Brendan Smyth. This was followed by an obscene media onslaught against Bishop Comiskey when he went to the USA for treatment for alcoholism. In 1999, TV3 had to apologise for a second (and unrelated ) slander against Bishop Magee while shortly afterwards John Cooney published a biography of Archbishop McQuaid in which he accused him of making sexual advances to underage boys. (This allegation as rejected even by reviewers who praised the remainder of the book!). You are aware that Cooney was made Religious Affairs correspondent of the Irish Independent a few years after the publication of his scurrilous book. (Try to imagine a journalist who similarly slandered a former Chief Rabbi of Ireland, being appointed to the staff of the Irish Catholic.)"
COMMENT on 13 July 2017: I suspect the allegations against Cardinal George Pell, former Archbishop of Sydney and then Melbourne, fall into the same category. Of the Irish hierarchy mentioned above, ALL were either Archbishops (including one Cardinal) OR very well-known Bishops. Obscure prelates seem to be safe from this type of claim!
