Berlin To Compensate Victims of Paedophile Foster Scheme

Berlin To Compensate Victims of Paedophile Foster Scheme

The Times, Wednesday March 4, 2020 by Oliver Moody, Berlin

[ This is not a unique aberration. In the 1960s, 70s and indeed much later there were many "experiments" of this type by people so enamored of "liberation" and so devoured by hatred of "reactionaries" that they threw all caution to the winds. The liberal Establishment today are their lineal descendants and not very keen to expose the misdeeds of their own kind. I note without surprise that
 "Four years ago the Berlin Senate commissioned an inquiry into the scandal from experts at Göttingen University. Their final report has yet to be published."]

The social scientist Helmut Kentler argued that paedophilia could have “positive consequences”

Two victims of a bizarre social experiment in which Berlin’s city hall deliberately placed troubled children in the care of paedophiles are on the brink of winning compensation.

From 1969 to 2003 the authorities put at least nine boys in the hands of convicted sex offenders on the advice of a disgraced social scientist. The idea behind the Kentler experiment — named after Helmut Kentler, an academic who argued that paedophilia could have “positive consequences” — was that unruly and “feeble-minded” children would benefit from adult sexual attention. 

In the late 1960s Kentler persuaded West Berlin’s ruling Senate that the homeless boys would jump at the opportunity to be fostered by paedophiles and would be “head over heels in love” with their new father figures.

One of the boys, referred to in legal proceedings as Marco, had been taken into care after suffering physical abuse at the hands of his father. In 1989, aged six, he was placed with a convicted child abuser. A year later this foster father, Fritz H, began going into Marco’s room for a “cuddle”. Marco has claimed in an interview with Der Spiegel, a weekly news magazine, that for ten years he was repeatedly beaten and raped by Fritz H, until he reached the threshold of adulthood and fought back.

Another of Fritz H’s victims, given the cover name Sven, was abandoned by his parents at the age of seven and contracted hepatitis B on the streets of Berlin. In 1990 he was entrusted to the paedophile and suffered repeated sexual assaults.

Fritz H is alleged to have recorded the abuses on a video camera and kept the boys isolated from the outside world in his flat. From 1974 Fritz H, who has since died, fostered four other boys. One of them, who is referred to as Sascha, lived in the flat at the same time as Sven and Marco. Sascha was allegedly neglected and denied medical care, leading to his death in 2003 from pneumonia.

It is not known how many children were subjected to the Kentler experiment. Four years ago the Berlin Senate commissioned an inquiry into the scandal from experts at Göttingen University. Their final report has yet to be published. At the beginning of the experiment, Kentler, who died in 2008, was regarded as one of Germany’s foremost sexologists and often appeared as an expert witness in court cases. He boasted of having secured the acquittal of several alleged paedophiles.

In 1970 he urged the Bundestag to decriminalise sex between adults and children in West Germany, arguing that teenagers were “almost always more seriously damaged” by the prosecution of their abusers than by the abuse itself. Nine years later he published a book in which it was claimed that numerous scientific studies had produced no evidence of paedophilia’s negative effects.

Marco and Sven were so badly scarred by their ordeal that they have been unable to work. In 2016 they brought a formal complaint to the city authorities.The Senate has now agreed in principle to pay them compensation as part of an out-of-court settlement, according to Der Tagesspiegel, a daily newspaper, but there is a dispute over the extent of the damages.

One of the victims’ lawyers is said to have pressed for a lump sum of €100,000 and a monthly pension of €2,500, backdated to the end of the fostering arrangement in 2001. The city of Berlin has said that it is working on a “solution that would satisfy the interests of those affected”.


And this is a German report from 2016 when the Inquiry by the Berlin Senate commenced

Child Abuse Head of German 'Pedophilia Project' Believed Sex Was Beneficial for Street Kids

 16.12.2016  Sputnik Germany

The scandal surrounding the Berlin Senate's project, in which homeless teens were deliberately sent to pedophile men who were employed as their foster fathers and took care of them, is gaining more and more attention across Germany.

A study by the Institute for Democratic Research at the University of Göttingen is supposed to reveal further details about the scandal.In this regard, Sputnik Germany discussed the issue with the head member of the investigation team, Teresa Nentwig, who revealed shocking details about the project.

"Men who had been convicted of sexual contact with minors were appointed by the Berlin leadership as guardians. Children and young people, who lived on the street before that, had to "pay" for a warm bed, good food and clean clothes, engaging in sexual relationships with their caregivers," Nentwig said.

The initiator of this project was Helmut Kentler, psychologist and professor at the University of Hannover. His idea was that the sexual intercourse should have had a positive impact on the personal development of the neglected boys.

The project was aimed at the so-called "children of the Zoo station," involved in drug trafficking and prostitution. At that time, Nentwig said, the Berlin authorities were helpless and didn't know how they should behave toward these young people, and so were ready to carry out even such "experiments".

Such willingness can be "partly explained by the historical context," Nentvig stated.

"There are many things that must be considered as a complex issue. The 1960s were a time of sexual liberalization and educational breakthrough […]. There was also a striving for a full legalization of sexual relations between adolescents and adults, and Helmut Kentler was one of those who promoted this initiative in a special committee of the Bundestag," the expert said.

In 2013, the Senate started investigations into this experiment. However, according to Nentwig, a full-scale investigation proved to be impossible because not all relevant documents could be declassified.

"The fact is that access to them can be granted only after a certain period of time. There have been initiatives to reduce this period: some of the applications were approved, but others were rejected for reasons connected with the protection of personal information," the expert said.

Communication with the victims has also proven problematic. According to Nentwig, they do not want to describe their experiences and recall their terrible past.

However, the expert believes that it is necessary to continue the investigation and, in particular, examine the case of the Odenwald School, a boarding school where the Berlin Senate sent underage boys, many of whom are assumed to have later become subject to sexual abuse.

The Decadence of the Sisters of Mercy

 

Catherine McAuley - founded Sisters of Mercy 1831

AND Sister Helena O'Donoghue (Alpha and Omega)

"Hitler's Table Talk" Christianity is a rebellion against natural law, a protest against nature. Taken to its logical extreme, Christianity would mean the systematic cultivation of the human failure. (Adolf Hitler, 10 October 1941) 

And in fact Hitler had a point. Christian Churches have often been accused of being tools of the ruling class, "The Conservative Party at prayer" in the UK, preaching "Pie in the Sky when you die" to fool the lower classes and keep them in their place. Unfortunately there is a more dangerous and repulsive heresy i.e. The Culture of Victimhood which does indeed have roots in the Gospel.

 "Christianity, according to Nietzsche, exalted the weakling, the underling, the mediocre man, over against this magnificent man. It caused the slave to resent his superior, to envy him, and to wish to overthrow him with his own inferiority. Christianity exalted the sniveling victim, and gave honor to criminals, prostitutes, beggars, and worthless throw-aways ..."  

I take the above to be a perversion of Christianity but it appears to be the ideology practiced by the leaders of the Sisters of Mercy today when they endorse false allegations of child rape and murder against their own innocent colleagues! They appear to believe that even when accusers tell transparent lies (up to and including Blood Libel), those unfortunate "victims"  must have suffered at the hands of the Patriarchal Church to make them behave in such a way. Blaming the "Patriarchy" or "Clericalism" is a bit like like blaming Nietzsche's "magnificent man".  It's true our male clergy and bishops repudiated Nietzsche and his Ubermensch. However they did see themselves as a type of spiritual aristocracy  and Nietzsche would appreciate how their authority has been undermined by victim-mongering mediocre nuns!

Rory Connor

20 February 2020

The Reasons for "The Apologies of the Sisters of Mercy"

This is a follow-up to my article "The Apologies of the Sisters of Mercy". Before I wrote the former article I attempted to contact the Sisters of Mercy in Ireland (where they currently lead The Association of Missionaries and Religious - AMRI) and then in the USA.  I didn't want people hostile to the Catholic Church to take comfort from what I proposed to write. Of course I was unsuccessful in contacting the Sisters but the problem with giving aid and comfort to anti-clerics doesn't  arise for a curious reason. The Irish journalists and broadcasters who published obscene lies about Sister Xavieria and Nora Wall (formerly Sister Dominic) have no wish to revisit their long since discredited libels. They cannot denounce the Sisters' betrayal of innocent nuns without calling attention to their own vicious behaviour! 

(A) The Death of Baby Marian Howe in 1955

In 1996 the producer and director, Louis Lentin, made a television documentary about abuse in children’s homes which was shown by RTE, the main public service broadcasting station in Ireland. It focused on the brutal regime which was said to have been operating during the 1950s at the Sisters of Mercy industrial school at Goldenbridge, Dublin. The documentary told the supposed life story of Christine Buckley and featured her allegations against one Mercy nun in particular, Sister Xavieria Lally. Her claims were transparently false. On one occasion, she said she 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 says 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 substantiate this bizarre claim" (Richard Webster in "States of Fear, the Redress Board and Ireland’s Folly" )

 After the broadcast of ‘Dear Daughter’, the Sisters of Mercy issued their first public apology, in February 1996. This stated:

In the light of recent revelations regarding the mistreatment of children in our institutions

we the Mercy Sisters wish to take this opportunity to sincerely and unreservedly express

our deep regret to those men and women who at any time or place in our care were hurt

or harshly treated. The fact that most complaints relate to many years ago is not offered as

an excuse. As a Congregation we fully acknowledge our failures and ask for forgiveness.

Aware of the painful and lasting effect of such experiences we would like to hear from

those who have suffered and we are putting in place an independent and confidential help

line. This help line will be staffed by competent and professional counsellors who will

listen sympathetically and who will be in the position to offer further help if required. In

this way we would hope to redress the pain insofar as that is possible so that those who

have suffered might experience some peace, healing and dignity.

Life in Ireland in the 40s and 50s was in general harsh for many people. This was reflected

in orphanages, which were under funded, under staffed and under resourced. It was in

this climate that many Sisters gave years of generous service to the education and care

of children. However, we made mistakes and irrespective of the passage of time as a

Congregation we now openly acknowledge our failures and ask for forgiveness.

Regretfully we cannot change the past. As we continue our work of caring and education

today we will constantly review and monitor our procedures, our personnel and our

facilities. Working in close cooperation with other voluntary and statutory agencies we are

committed to doing all in our power to ensure that people in our care have a protective

and supportive environment.

We were founded to alleviate pain, want and misery. We have tried to do this through our

work in health care, education, child care, social and pastoral work. Despite our evident

failures which we deeply regret we are committed to continuing that work in partnership

with many others in the years ahead.

Richard Webster commented "In the wake of the broadcast, atrocity stories about Goldenbridge and other industrial schools began to proliferate." It would have been more correct if he had written "In the wake of the Apology by the leaders of the Sisters of Mercy that failed to refer to the obvious falsehoods in the documentary or to defend their own innocent colleagues". 

The main atrocity story to emerge was that Sister Xavieria had been responsible for the death of an infant child Marian Howe in 1955. When it became evident that the Sisters were not prepared to defend Xavieria against THAT lie, the accusation quickly escalated to one of deliberate murder!

HOWEVER in the beginning some journalists and broadcasters who recognised the absurdity of the claims, were prepared to say so:

"Medical View 'Inconsistent' with Goldenbridge Abuse" - extract from article in The Sunday Times (Irish Edition) 28 April 1996

One of the more chilling allegations to surface was that an 11-month-old baby died four days after she was put into Goldenbridge. When the infant's father, Myles Howe. returned from England and went to St Ultan's hospital, he was told by a nurse that his baby had burns on her knees but the staff had got her too late to save her. The postmortem said the child died of dysentery.

The Howes have never been satisfied by the official response.

[Doctor] Prendiville [1] recalls that St Ultan's was established largely for dealing with bowel complaints such as dysentery or gastroenteritis, a common illness among children which at that time could reach epidemic proportions in Dublin. He speculated that Marian Howe was more than likely admitted to St Ultan's with a bowel complaint. "I wouldn't say that burns of that size on a child's legs would have been the cause of death. They didn't treat burns in St Ultan's. If the baby died from a burn, there would have to be an inquest. But failure to communicate information is a defect in many hospitals," he said.

But if the burns were not the cause of Marian's death, asks Howe, why was he told by Xavieria that it was an "accident" and not dysentery that killed his child? Why, on his arrival at St Ultan's to see his dead child, did a nurse indicate to him that his daughter had died of burns? And why could nobody explain to him the large burn marks on the sides of her knees?

The outrage that followed the Prime Time programme [2] was directed as much at Xavieria's denials of abuse as at an apparently "soft" line of questioning. The allegation that a baby in her charge died of burns was not put to her on the programme. The reason was that after researching the allegation, the Prime Time team could find no evidence to support it. according to an RTE source. [my emphasis] The reporter did ask Xavieria about the incident, he said, but her response was edited out of the programme.

Both Buckley and Dear Daughter producer Louis Lentin, regard the Prime Time report as an effort by RTE to undermine the documentary. "Sister Xavieria is perfectly entitled to any right of reply, but this programme bent over backwards to be reverential," said Lentin. "The facts were not put to her in a strong, investigative manner."

References:

[1] Doctor J. B. Prendiville was a senior surgeon who worked at the hospital where children from Goldenbridge  were treated during the 1950s.

[2]  A Prime Time special broadcast by RTE in April 1996 highlighted some discrepancies in the tale of horror

When the Sisters paid £20,000 and made a "qualified apology" to the Howe family who accused them of being responsible for the death of baby Howe, 42 years before, it was a game changer - and the media responded accordingly.

The Death Of Baby Howe

Irish Times, Saturday, 11 October, 1997 

The fate of baby Marion Howe in Goldenbridge orphanage 42 years ago will have disturbed many people in the past two days. Some of these people are members of the Sisters of Mercy order. They will wonder what happened to transform a healthy, 11 month-old baby, within a few days of her arrival at Goldenbridge, to a child dying of dysentery and with an unexplained burn on her leg.

It would appear that this week's settlement by the Mercy order has done nothing to reduce the pain of the Howe family - at least in the short term. In the settlement, the order agreed to pay £20,000 to the family but without admission of liability. The order also issued a qualified apology in which it said it was sorry "if there was any lack of courtesy and compassion at that time."

It is hardly surprising that this statement has brought little relief to the Howes or to others who suffered in Goldenbridge and elsewhere. Indeed, it is quite breathtaking that what happened to baby Howe could be equated with a "lack of courtesy and compassion." It is breathtaking that the acts of cruelty and bullying recounted by many former inmates of Sisters of Mercy orphanages, here and abroad, could be explained away by a phrase - which has about it the ring of the public relations agency.

But what really hurts those who suffered at the hands of some of the Mercy nuns is the inclusion in the statement of the word `if'. Is the order saying that it does not believe what the Howes have told them? Is it saying that it does not believe the Irish women who told their stories in Louis Lentin's Dear Daughter documentary last year? Is it saying that it does not believe the men and women in Australia who have recounted similar experiences at the hands of members of the order there?

Why then has the order issued qualified apologies? Why has it paid compensation to the Howes, albeit a relatively meagre sum? Is there not a tacit admission here that what these people say happened did happen? Or are we to believe that the Sisters of Mercy have taken to paying compensation and issuing apologies for things that didn't happen at all?  [My emphasis] .............

An escalation of the allegation to one of child murder was a natural follow up to the decadent behaviour of the leaders of the Sisters of Mercy. The allegation that Sister Xavieria had used a hot poker to burn holes in the baby's two legs was highly libelous but Mirror editors correctly believed that Mercy leaders would do nothing and would allow their colleague's reputation to be trashed. 

The headline 

HOT POKER WAS USED ON LITTLE MARION.. NO CASH WILL GET HER BACK; I THINK MY BABY WAS MURDERED AT THE ORPHANAGE, SAYS PAYOUT MUM

appeared in the tabloid newspaper The Mirror on 11 October 1997 under the byline of Neil Leslie.

The article began:

The elderly mother of tragic Goldenbridge baby Marion Howe claims her daughter's death at the hands of nuns was "nothing short of murder". Distraught Christina Howe has revealed for the first time that she believes her 11-month-old toddler was assaulted with a hot poker.

She was speaking after receiving a pounds 20,000 payout from the Sisters of Mercy and an apology over the death of baby Marion. But she said the payout was no substitute for an explanation of her child's mystery death. It is 42 years since Marion died but pensioner Mrs Howe sobbed: "I just can't forgive them."

Speaking at her home in Dublin last night, she said: "What they did was murder, that's my view of it anyhow. I am still very angry and I still don't know the truth. That was all I wanted to know, the truth. Money didn't matter. But now we will never know because there are no witnesses. It's an awful burden. I will never get over it."

She revealed that the nuns had initially offered pounds 7,500 for her and her husband Myles to drop court action against them. "They offered us that money a few months ago. It was an insult really. But we didn't want the money, we just wanted to know what happened to our lovely little girl. She was such a beautiful baby. I had 16 children and 10 are alive and I just look at them now and wonder which one would she have been like. It's heartbreaking. We will try to put it behind us now. My husband is still too upset to speak to anyone about it."

Christina wept again as she recalled why her little girl was taken from her all those years ago. She said: "I was sick. She was only supposed to be there for two weeks but she was dead in four days. Some of my older daughters remember. Mary, who was around four or five, recalls her being taken away in the pram and saying 'Day Day'. Little did we know it would be the last 'Day Day' we ever saw her alive.

"We are still angry. The nuns never even told me what happened at the time. They rang my husband who was in England and told him not to bother coming home, that they would look after everything. They wondered why we were so upset and told us: 'It's only a baby'. But our little girl was lucky because she had parents. What about all the little ones that didn't. How many more have been buried like that?"

Christina believes horrendous burns to her baby's legs were caused with a hot poker. "I always said it was a poker because of the shape of the holes. She was only 11 months old. It's really awful what they did. Marion had burns on both her legs, not just one which was reported. You could place your fingers right through the hole in her little leg. How could anybody do that to an 11-month-old baby. It is frightening to think such things could have happened to a little infant. And these people had the cheek to say they would bury our baby. They were covering up. Do they think we are fools?"

Mrs Howe and her husband visited the orphanage near Dublin three weeks after Marion was buried in an attempt to find out what happened. She recalled: "The nun who answered the door shut it in our face. We were devastated. There was no any investigation, yet we told the Guards. We were left thinking, year after year, day after day, what ever happened to our little Marion. We never got the truth. No money will ever replace her. When my husband reported it to the police they should have looked into it. Think what we could have done to save other orphans from torture?"

The court victory has opened the door for a flood of similar settlements against the Sisters of Mercy who ran a cruel regime in Goldenbridge 40 years ago. The scandal was uncovered after orphan Christine Buckley exposed the brutal life in her television documentary Dear Daughter last year. Christine told of the reign of terror in which kids were beaten, placed in tumble dryers and forced to sit on potties for hours. Christina Howe saw the moving film and was horrified."It was then we realised that if all this had happened to this woman, what had happened to our little girl," she said.

Christine Buckley last night offered her sympathy to the Howes. She said: "It must have been like burying their baby again. If they had got a million pounds it would have been nothing because they did not get an honest explanation as to what happened."

She said it was time for an independent public inquiry. "The state has let us down badly. Had one of us been the daughter of a VIP this would never have gone so far. The Howes have waited 42 years for the truth. Someone knows the answer to their question."

"Christina Howe saw the moving film [Dear Daughter] and was horrified."It was then we realised that if all this had happened to this woman, what had happened to our little girl," she said." 

So the Sisters paid her €20,000 and she promptly accused them of deliberately murdering her baby - AND she was supported by Christine Buckley the star of "Dear Daughter".  It should have been a moment of revelation for the Sisters but not at all!

DEATH OF BABY AT GOLDENBRIDGE

 Dail Eireann – Volume 481 – 21 October, 1997

Mr. Neville [Dan Neville, Fine Gael TD for Limerick West]

Mr. Neville asked the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform if he will have investigations made into the alleged abuse of a child at Goldenbridge Orphanage which may have resulted in her death.

 Minister of State at the Department of Justice,  Equality and Law Reform (Miss M. Wallace):

The Minister has been informed by the Garda authorities that a comprehensive investigation was carried out into allegations of child abuse at Goldenbridge Orphanage and the death of a child there. A file in the matter was forwarded to the Director of Public Prosecutions who directed that there should not be a prosecution against any person mentioned in the file.

The Gardai (Irish police) will not have appreciated having their time wasted on carrying out a ludicrous inquiry. This should mean that their interests would align with those of the Sisters in ensuring that these vile claims be discredited  and not repeated. In fact the Sisters' continued for years and decades with apologies and payouts and made themselves ridiculous in the eyes of the authorities and fake victims alike!

(B) Nora Wall and Pablo McCabe

There is a Wikipedia article on former Sister of Mercy Nora Wall and an article by Breda O'Brien in the Jesuit quarterly review "Studies" (Winter 2006)  entitled:Miscarriage of Justice: Paul McCabe and Nora Wall

Paul (Pablo) McCabe was a homeless schizophrenic man who was targeted by two false accusers - women in their twenties -  because prior to 1999, no woman had been convicted of rape in Ireland. The two sociopaths Regina Walsh and her "witness" Patricia Phelan hence claimed that McCabe was the main rapist of Regina Walsh while Nora Wall (then Sister Dominic) held her down. He was the ultimate victim - targeted not in his own right but as a means of extracting money from the Sisters of Mercy. And they were to betray him in a repulsive fashion. 

There were two rape allegations. In relation to the first that was alleged to have occurred on "victim" Regina Walsh's 12th birthday party, the defense showed that McCabe could not possibly have been there on the date in question - 8 January 1990. No problem for the jury! It acquitted both accused on that count, and convicted them on the second rape charge for which no exact date or even year was specified. As per Wikipedia 

"Like Nora Wall, [Pablo McCabe] was never questioned on the second allegation that he had also raped Regina Walsh two years previously in 1987 or 1988, again with Wall present. In fact, neither McCabe’s nor Wall’s defense teams received notification of this second charge until 28 May 1999, only six days before hearings began, and two years after they were initially charged."

It is reasonably clear that the second rape charge was cooked up (and no exact date specified) because the Prosecution became aware that McCabe had a cast iron alibi for the date of Regina Walsh's 12th birthday. It is also notable that Nora and Pablo were first arrested in 1996 just a few months after the broadcast of "Dear Daughter" and the first apology by the  Sisters of Mercy. Their trial in June 1999 took place just after RTE broadcast Mary Raftery's 3-part documentary "States of Fear" that demonised the religious congregations. I was told by one of their defence team that they were convicted in a "climate of hysteria" created by States of Fear - and Nora Wall herself said this to Breda O'Brien. 

Nora Wall's family in Co. Waterford stood by her after the conviction - but not, of course the leaders of the Sisters of Mercy.  The fact that one of the two allegations was clearly a lie did not bother them in the slightest. As per Wikipedia

Reaction of Sisters of Mercy

After their conviction, the Sisters of Mercy issued a statement, which read:

We are all devastated by the revolting crimes which resulted in these verdicts. Our hearts go out to this young woman who, as a child, was placed in our care. Her courage in coming forward was heroic. We beg anyone who was abused whilst in our care to go to the Gardaí.

Even after the collapse of the case against the two accused, the Sisters of Mercy made no effort to apologise to Wall or to withdraw their statement of support for Walsh. One commentator remarked: "The young woman their hearts were going out to, was the false accuser, not their own innocent nun. Our absolutist system had seduced them into identifying with the accuser and betraying their own sister."

On 23 July 1999 Judge Paul Carney sentenced Nora Wall to life imprisonment and Pablo McCabe to 12 years. Having been the first woman to be convicted of rape in the history of the Irish State, Nora now became the first person to receive a sentence of life imprisonment for that crime. The Wikipedia article also records that

The director of the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre, Olive Braiden, welcomed the imposition of a maximum sentence, and said it would ensure that Nora Wall would be monitored for the rest of her life to prevent recurrence.

 There was no comment from Olive Braiden after the collapse of the rape convictions. Coming from a feminist, her silence doesn't surprise me. But why did the Sisters of Mercy say nothing? Why didn't they withdraw their apology to the sociopath Regina Walsh who was prepared to wreck the lives of two innocent people so that she could sue the Sisters of Mercy for "compensation"? If they were not prepared to go that far, why couldn't they at least express sympathy for their former colleague AND for Pablo McCabe whom they had glorified when he could be depicted as a victim of the Patriarchy?

Regarding Pablo, Breda O'Brien's article in Studies Review in Winter 2006 focuses on him and indicates how the very Merciful Sisters originally favoured him:
Paul McCabe addressed a Diocesan Gathering of Mercy Sisters in Gracedieu in Waterford in 1988. His account tells of being born in Dublin in 1949 to a single mother. She struggled on until Paul was three, but she ‘had great difficulty in working, paying for accommodation and paying someone to look after me.” Thus he came to live in what was to become known as the “ old St. Michael’s”, a junior industrial school run by the Sisters of Mercy in Cappoquin. His memories of that time are “very happy ones of caring and interested women.” He then went to the Industrial School at Artane, Dublin, which he found traumatic, as it had “over nine hundred boys in a very strict set-up.”.....
So when Pablo could be presented as a symbolic victim of the Patriarchy, the Sisters allowed him to  address one of their annual meetings. But when he fell victim  to anti-clerical fanatics and feminists, they threw him to the wolves!

(C) Sisters of Mercy in the USA

When Catholic teenage boys from Covington High School, Kentucky  were savagely slandered by the US media in January 2019, The US Sisters of Mercy were quick to comment - on the side of the slanderers of course!

https://twitter.com/sistersofmercy/status/1086689015334617088

Sisters of Mercy  @SistersofMercy  Jan 19, 2019
Racism and intolerance in all forms go directly against Catholic social teaching.

The disturbing videos being shared of this incident showcase a bigoted disrespect of indigenous peoples and remind us how urgent our work for racial justice remains.

Covington Catholic faces backlash

Their denunciation of innocent boys who were being subjected to vile media abuse was repeated 888 times and got 2.9 thousand 'Likes' and 392 Replies.  I replied myself quoting Andrew Sullivan

Rory Connor @hallisseypat Jan 26, 2019
Replying to @SistersofMercy

Andrew Sullivan "The same liberals who fret about “micro-aggressions” for 20-somethings were able to see 16-year-olds subjected to worst racist garbage from [black] religious bigots & then express  desire to punch the kids in the face"
The Abyss of Hate Versus Hate by Andrew Sullivan

Any apology Sisters?

plus a second tweet from me

Rory Connor @hallisseypat Jan 25, 2019
Replying to @SistersofMercy

You approved a media lynch mob attack on Catholic students, without bothering to check the evidence. Your IRISH colleagues did the same when they endorsed false allegations of child abuse AND murder! See "The Apologies of the Sisters of Mercy" 
and a third
Rory Connor @hallisseypat Jan 27, 2019
Replying to @SistersofMercy

Near 1000 Retweets; 3000+ Likes. One retweeter said he was "amused by the irony of nuns joining a twitter mob dogpile". You know u have  a duty to the Catholic schoolboys u slandered & your social justice campaigns are worthless if u can't see this?
@JamesMartinSJ @RuthDE

No reply from the Merciful Sisters. I think it is significant that the Bishop of Covington Roger Joseph Foys and the very liberal Fr James Martin SJ did apologise for originally joining in the media condemnation of the boys. To a significant extent, this is  a problem with members of female Religious Congregations - although male clergy and Religious have not covered themselves with glory either! 

(D) The Sisters of Mercy and Their Accusers - Eloi and Morlocks

[ The Irish Sisters of Mercy currently lead the Association of Missionaries and Religious in Ireland (AMRI). A few years ago I asked former colleagues of mine in De La Salle Brothers if they could approach the Sisters and tell them they had a moral obligation to withdraw their apologies to the accusers of Nora Wall and Sister Xavieria. I was told it is futile and the nuns are beyond redemption!  I also spoke to the retired world-wide head of a male religious order who felt that the Sisters were originally naive, and later became terrified of the malignant accusers and the media that broadcast their fantasies. No doubt there is something to this explanation. However I note that from the very beginning, the nuns' "naivety" consisted of bowing down before the powers-that-be and sacrificing their own innocent colleagues who had no power. That form of "naivety" is unfamiliar to me - and probably to most other members of the human race. Decadence is probably a better description - which is why I think of H.G. Wells and his picture of a dystopian future in The Time Machine ! ]


In 1895, H.G. Wells’ published The Time Machine a science fiction novel that presents a very interesting look at what our future could be (and arguably has become). The time-traveler jumps many thousands of years into the future to find two types of beings roaming the Earth, the Eloi and the Morlocks.  While the time-traveler aligns himself with the Eloi, especially through his relationship with Weena, an Eloi he rescues from drowning, his attitude to them is ambivalent.

The Eloi are happy, carefree people who live above the earth’s surface, eating fruit and basking in the sun, while the Morlocks lurk in the underground and shadows, hiding from light and only venturing out of their dark habitats to capture and feed on the Eloi race.

The time-traveler’s describes saving Weena from drowning.  “The main current ran rather swiftly, but not too strongly for even a moderate swimmer.  It will give you an idea, therefore, of the strange deficiency in these creatures, when I tell you that none made the slightest attempt to rescue the weakly crying little thing which was drowning before their eyes” 

In her essay "The Eloi and the Morlocks" part of a Georgetown University blog  "The Other Victorians" English Literature student Mary Burgoyne writes: The dependency of the Eloi frustrates me as these people seem to do nothing to fight against the Morlocks.  In this state, they appear more like animals, and thus, position themselves as prey in the predator/prey relationship the time-traveler ultimately discovers to exist within this environment. 

The time-traveler also goes on to explain, “The Upper-world people might once have been the favoured aristocracy, and the Morlocks their mechanical servants: but that had long since passed away.  The two species that had resulted from the evolution of man were sliding down towards, or had already arrived at, an altogether new relationship.” 

Like the relationship between the Sisters of Mercy and the sociopaths before whom they abase themselves, and whom they try to appease by sacrificing their own innocent colleagues! [Mary Burgoyne concludes that "as a reader, I feel more inclined to sympathize or at least try to understand the Morlock’s cruel point of view because of the action and strategies they employ in their daily lives where I think the Eloi exercise none." ]

Cardinal George Pell and His Accusers [1]

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 here
Eight 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!