The Victorian Police went after Pell from 2013 with their ‘Operation Tethering’. Nothing turned up until April or so 2014 after a funeral. I think it was not one of the accusations that are now ALL dismissed or dropped it was the only one that in the end broke through and secured the conviction.
The one complaint – that has Pell a convicted pedophile and 2 time child rapist in the sacristy of the Cathedral after Sunday Mass, in full regalia mind!- came from a longer process of being put in shape, and only became a ‘formal statement to the police at June 18, 2015. That is when the (now) only complainant gives his statement to SANO. Note this is over a year after the funeral of the heroin user who never made any complaint, and it was several months after the complainant talked of the issues to the Grieving Mother (GM).
What happened was that a 31 yr. old man died on April 8, 2014 of a heroin overdose without alleging any historical rape was committed against him or his friend and having told his own mother on 2 separate occasions that he had not been abused in any way at all. He did not tell of any abuse ever. He never brought such matters up with anyone despite a huge financial incentive for him to do so if it had happened.
We are to believe that 2 boys were supposedly raped and back singing without being missed by the rest of the choir, or dropping a note, let alone bursting out in tears. Pell is in jail awaiting sentencing. (he got 6 years for this crap).
ABC journo Milligan got her man!
Why was this GM and her ex husband (EX) approached by Vic. police from SANO?
According to Milligan, the GM was serving customers at work when she received a telephone call from a detective from Victoria police. … He wanted to know if her son had told her about anything that he’d borne witness to or experienced during his time at St Patrick’s or St Kevin’s….GM was shocked. And said ‘Oh, I don’t know anything about that one, you know, I have no knowledge,’” she remembers though on Milligan’s word, that Detectives from Taskforce SANO, then [despite ‘I have no knowledge’] came to take a statement from the GM that had no knowledge. GM said she was completely in the dark about what had happened. After the police went to see GM, they also visited her EX. “Nothing shocks me; I’ve seen a lot of stuff,” [EX] explains. “But that did shock me. But then, when I mulled it over, in the back of my mind, I’m thinking, ‘That’s making sense.’” … Apparently the visit, which police only expected to take an hour, took five. EX gave the police the medical reports and other documentation about his son and signed a statement. [Yet he too knew nothing; so also had nothing relevent to say in any police statement. They were more than just fishing.
Something was the ‘that’ brought along by the Victorian Police that shocked him]. What was the THAT? It has to be information that could have only come from one source – the eventual complainant- that obviously was not at that point prepared to make a FORMAL statement.
Time moves on and GM says according to Milligan; ‘One evening, some time after the detectives took the statement [from her], the future complainant, happened to come by when GM was on the late shift. The shop was empty. She decided to have the conversation with him…. “I just asked him if I could ask him what happened… I didn’t want to bring back bad memories for him.”…But (the complainant) understood immediately. “He said, ‘No, no, ask me.’ I asked him if my son was a victim and he said, ‘Yes.’” The complainant then told her what he says happened with the archbishop.
Now remember; Milligan says…
The mother had asked her son. Not just once. … “I asked [him], I can’t remember the words I used, whether he was touched up, or played with, and [he] told me ‘no’.” The boy shrugged. She says shrugging was something her son would sometimes do when he didn’t want to talk about things. “I never said anything to anybody,” she says. “And then, again, after a while, I asked him and again he told me ‘no’.
BUT the future complainant;
“He told me that himself and [my son] used to play in the back of the church in the closed-off rooms,” she says….And um, they got sprung by Archbishop Pell and he [Pell] locked the door and he made them perform oral sex.” Milligan reports that (the complainant) still remembered the incident so clearly. Being picked up afterwards by his parents. Staring out the car window on the way home.’
The complainant told GM according to Milligan’s account, that her son’s funeral was the breaking point for him. It plunged him into despair and regret. His own mother was very concerned about his well being. He had not been coping since his friend’s death.
Milligan then reports ‘He decided that he had to come forward, he had to say something.’
But it was June 18, 2015: That the complainant gives his polished statement to SANO.
GM is NOT the very first to hear of the allegations from the eventual complainant months before he gives his formal statement to SANO he must have talked to the police already; the formal statement came later.
‘And um, they got sprung by Archbishop Pell and he locked the door and he made them perform oral sex.’ was what Milligan reported that a dead man’s mother was told by another 30 plus year old man 17 odd years after the event. Yet in later evidence the ‘door’ was not locked because the place was the sacristy and it has multiple doors. It is now a feature of this notorious case that the implausibility leapt further up the scale with the 2 boys oral rapes happening while anyone could walk in through multiple open doors. If a pedophile behaved like this he wouldn’t last very long. But that is not how the story started. It started in an explanation to a dead man’s mother that Pell locked the door. The police know there is a conflict in this.
Brennan says; ‘The complainant’s evidence related to events that occurred back in 1996 or 1997 when he was a 13-year-old choir boy at St Patrick’s Cathedral Melbourne. Most other witnesses had been choir boys, altar servers or Cathedral officials in 1996 when Pell first became archbishop of Melbourne. The complainant claimed that the first event, involving four charges, occurred after a solemn Sunday Mass celebrated by Pell in the second half of 1996. It was common ground between the prosecution and the defence that the dates to which these four charges must be attributed were 15 December 1996 or 22 December 1996. These were the dates on which the first and second solemn Sunday Masses were celebrated by Pell in the Cathedral after he had become archbishop in August 1996. The Cathedral had been undergoing renovations and thus was not used for Sunday Masses during earlier months of 1996.
The complainant said that he and another choir boy left the liturgical procession at the end of one Sunday Mass and went fossicking in the off-limits sacristy where they started swilling altar wine. The archbishop arrived unaccompanied, castigated them, and then, while fully robed in his copious liturgical vestments, proceeded to commit three vile sexual acts including oral penetration of the complainant. The complainant said that the sacristy door was wide open and altar servers were passing along the corridor. The complainant said that he and the other boy then returned to choir practice. The choir was making a Christmas recording at that time.’
Just remember that on July 16, 1996: Auxiliary Bishop George Pell is appointed Archbishop and we are to believe that 5 months later he is raping 2 boys after mass in the 1st or 2nd mass at the reopened repaired Cathedral and in his full regalia with the doors now wide open to boot! Then it’s off back to choir practice and none of the other members of the choir noticed a couple of ridiculously traumatised singers!
It is completely implausible for 2 children, 2 boys of 13 yrs to conceal such a traumatic attack and sing on like larks. That is what was supposed to have happened. No other member of the big choir (quite a few of them adults) spotted anything wrong at all. It was many years later when they were asked but no one recalled anything.
The one complainant had gone to the funeral having been contacted and invited by the dead man’s mother. Months later he dropped in on her and he told her a story, perhaps to comfort her who knows or cares. This complainant has been caught up in a web of accusations that only started after our only independent other witness had died. The one complainant said it was the funeral that pushed him over the top into outing Pell for the crimes he committed against them! Yet the only evidence we have is that he didn’t formally step forward till much later.
He just wanted justice according to Milligan.
Nevertheless, this started with a little story to a grieving mum about why her son went off the rails from an event behind locked doors!
This ‘pillar of his community’ entered his thirties without thinking to protect other 13 year old boys.
So one more point;
The heroin user in this story died having used since he was about 14 years of age and never once telling anyone that he was orally raped etc., WITH another witness of the same age who was also raped.
If it were true then this user had very strong evidence; almost an open and shut case for a trial against Pell and subsequent compensation from the church.
But this man who was obviously always desperate for money never sought to use this story as either an excuse for his lifestyle and some sympathy, or (most importantly) didn’t try to get hold of that bucket of money. He never once said Pell’s crazed attack ruined my life and never once expressed any fears for choirboys. He and his friend supposedly were raped side by side in full view of each other and could stand in court and tell the world the truth of the matter and a) get this ‘monster’ dealt with and b) protect other choirboys and c) get hold of a little matter of some compensation.
The Catholic church had been pumping out sums of money to victims of various pedophile priests and brothers for all these last 25 years or so. Significant sums have been paid to the victims so why not get some for yourself if you were so outrageously attacked by what has to be nothing but a mad man quite capable of doing it after every mass?
Why not protect all the other little boys over the course of the next 16 years?
It never happened is why.
Thanks Patrick. I got to your blogs on Pell via a paper by Chris S Friel, referenced by Keith Windschuttle in yesterday’s article.
https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2019/04/the-fanciful-testimony-that-convicted-george-pell/
Richard Mullins please stop. You have a theory that the story of sexual abuse in the Pell trial was lifted from a Rolling Stone magazine and that if this had been raised at the Pell trail the prosecution case would have fallen apart. You also speculate that the accusers may have had these memories implanted through hypnosis.
Firstly the Rolling Stone case must have been well known among church leaders and the well funded defense team must have examined previous similar cases so we can only conclude that they knew about the Rolling Stone case but decided against using this prosecution breaking piece of evidence.
Secondly your writing about the production of false memory is pure speculation.
The case does raise a legitimate reason to argue and that is the change in Victorian law to give equal weight to the victims accusation as to the defendants denial (in cases of child sexual abuse) but that is the way the law stands.
Pell was placed on trial and tried in accordance with the law (appeal pending) He had an expensive defense team and will have an expensive appeals team. He has received much more favor than a poor person would with similar charges.
What gets up people’s noses is that the church for many years has been involved via its staff in criminal activity against children. The staff have been protected so that the church would not lose its good name. Victims were silenced and in some cases paid money on the agreement that they remain silent. This is the church playing defense always looking to defend itself well a lot of us would like the church to play offense to report abusers to the police to refuse to keep the confessions of child molesters to them selves to release every victim from their bought silence to stop paying millions in legal defenses and turn that money into an anti abuse campaign.
PS Mary McKillop exposed a priest who was molesting children. He was transferred to Ireland and one year later she was excommunicated.So there is a tradition within the church of rebelling against the church first nonsense and we should acknowledge it.
Oh yes we should all rush to support the poor Cardinal but where were we with John Ellis who was abused by priest Duggan. The church offered John Ellis $30K as long as he say nothing and waive any future rights. John Ellis said no and sued the Trustees of the Roman Catholic Church and Pell. He lost in court and was ordered to pay $750,000 to the church to cover their court costs. The church pursued John Ellis for 3 years attempting to recover the money. John never paid and good luck to him.
So theres the behavior of the church first its hush money then its crush the victim in court then its attempt to bankrupt him with debt collectors.
That is a lot like the behavior of the Flinders University under the leadership of the ALP stalking horse Chubb. At any rate none of that relates to the merit of the Pell case and that merit is up there with the persecution of Lindy. The Dingos were guilty but which one-ones? As we know she had nothing at all to do with it but the police BUILT a ridiculous case and it included forensic science! Total bullshit. Just like what happened with Flinders building a case! More later.
Yes the rich and powerful can really roast the individual. In my previous example it was the church under Pell’s leadership who were screwing John Ellis but Im sure we all have examples. When we were at Uni and part of the anti fees campaign the police in Victoria raided students homes at dawn and eventually settled on an assault prosecution against Mic Armstrong 2 years they let him sweat that out only to find that on day 2 of his trial the police presented photographic evidence of Mic’s innocence. They had a tape I think showing someone at the back of a police horse at a no fees demo drag the officer off the horse while the tape showed Mic at the front of the horse. The case against Mic fell apart and was dismissed but I think the real purpose was to hold a prison sentence over his head for 2 years.
From your reply, it appears that you want to avoid dealing with the question of Pell’s conviction being unsafe. I have gone further than that and say the case ought never to have been taken to trial and further still because the police ought not to have gone to Rome with such pitiful questions that Pell was entitled to scoff at.
I don’t like Pell and his background of defending Church wealth or whatever, but that is not what he is sitting in jail for doing. This is as mad a case as ever got the unfortunate person hounded by the ABC led media pack and ridiculously accused by some weirdo who the police have polished the evidence for. Milligan is being praised rather than exposed for what she is and that is a rat that is well able to know that the story does not add up.
On what grounds is the case unsafe? In accord with current Victorian law the jury must decide whether the accuser is telling the truth or the accused is telling the truth.
The defense presented information about the robes and the church layout but the jury unanimously voted that Pell was guilty beyond reasonable doubt.
I think that there is a reasonable argument to go back to the legal position where some corroboration is necessary but that is not the current state of the law.
Where is the evidence that the jury got it wrong and if that evidence exists why wasnt it presented in court?
How was it that Lindy was even charged let alone convicted BUT SHE WAS! Pell was dragged into a hysterical circus and that is it!
‘On what grounds is the case unsafe?’
What is going on in peoples minds to even begin to think that this is how the world works! Nothing like what would clearly have been a completely deranged rape of 2 13 year old boys in such circumstances after mass in the sacristy of the Cathedral (where he was the new Archbishop on his first or second mass) could have happened and the pair of them go back to the choir and sing as if nothing happened. Then never speak of it again! Others in the choir would have noticed that 2 boys were upset! I used to sing as a boy and I know that I could not have been so traumatized and not missed a beat! It is utter rubbish. There is no other words for this. So many things would have had to have happened that nothing could possibly put this case to the level of beyond a reasonable doubt YET IT DID! So what the fuck has gone wrong not is this actually beyond a reasonable doubt.
My speculation is that somehow after the heroin addict dies the nut job has a or most probably another mental breakdown and comes up with a lunatic story! I wonder how often you have come across people that are spewing out rubbish with zero connection to reality? I see it often enough and so have you and so do the police. The coppers involved bought this twaddle because they were after Pell not because it made any real sense because it does not.
‘The [Lindy] defense presented information [and got nowhere as well] about the robes and the church layout but the jury unanimously voted that Pell was guilty beyond reasonable doubt.’
That IS exactly what makes this a totally unsafe verdict because it is not possible to place such a story in a category called beyond a reasonable doubt.
You obviously believe that this man was fairly convicted of his heinous crimes. BUT a benefit of any doubt must go to the accused. How could there be no doubt that such idiotic and unsatifactory sex acts against 2 boys could come out of the blue from even a pedophile! That is not the way that people stay out of the loony bin for very long let alone sane people stay out of jail.
This ABC / Police beat up also insults men generally in that 2 boys have this happen and grow to their thirties with no thought of protecting other boys. Bullshit twice over!
The jury got it wrong and the deceitful way that Milligan and the police have hidden the facts of how this all fits together is the real issue.
Pell WILL be released on appeal and this case will never go back to trial! This is the very definition of a case that has not risen to the standard of beyond a reasonable doubt! If Pell stays in jail then our society is even more messed up than I think it is and I have good cause to think it very messed up.
“You obviously believe that this man was fairly convicted of his heinous crimes.” Theres your problem right there. You make claims about my “obvious” beliefs, you lay claim to things that you do not know. I do think that there is a big question over word on word cases. How a jury can come to a conclusion when its one persons word against another’s is beyond me. A couple of years ago I was supporting an elderly chap accused of touching a 14 year old girl on the breast. It came down to her word against his. The judge ruled in her favor and he got a sexual assault conviction with all that entails.
You believe that the circumstances make it impossible to believe but the defense team had all that to work with but failed to convince a couple of jurors that there was reasonable doubt. As to the Chamberlain case I didn’t think that she had anything to answer for until they “found” fetal hemoglobin in the family car but this was answered when they admitted that the tests would be positive for fetal hemoglobin as well as for rust proofing.
I was surprised on the evidence I read that Pell was convicted and I expect him to get off on appeal like this article says https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/feb/28/george-pell-has-good-chance-of-winning-appeal-against-convictions-expert-says
‘You believe that the circumstances make it impossible to believe’ no I don’t. I have explained that it is impossible for any fair-minded person to conclude that beyond a reasonable doubt (that Pell is otherwise the beneficiary of) this happened.
The question to anyone who believes it happened is; could you conceive of being wrong? Because if you could, then not guilty is the verdict and that is that.
The verdict is manifestly unsafe.
Far too many ducks had to get in line for this to have happened BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT and then remained a secret for all these years, till victim 2 (who denied ever having had any molestation twice and that despite what would have been an open and shut case and the desperately needed financial gain he could have got) conveniently dies!
The real world of the heroin user is not a pretty place. The real world of the fruitcake is not the stories they tell. It’s the little details like locked that becomes unlocked when polished up by the police that make this case fail to the point of unsafe.
There was only 1 complainant and he had mental troubles!
There was only 1 complainant and he had mental troubles! Can you save me some time by telling me where you found out that the complainant had “mental troubles”
“My speculation is that somehow after the heroin addict dies the nut job has a or most probably another mental breakdown and comes up with a lunatic story!” You describe the complainant as a nut job and you think that he had another mental breakdown. My simple question is where are you getting this information because I can’t find it. Where is it written that the complainant has “mental troubles”?
Milligan in one of her hit pieces described the heroin addict telling his mum that the complainant ‘was not doing too well’. Then later after that pretty close boyhood friend dies he is again and again described as something like fragile(on memory) in Milligan’s junk.
Just remember to read Milligan with a view to looking for what she is concealing especially the timeline and remember how this ‘in his own way pillar of society’ was supposed to be a recovering victim of 2 traumatising attacks as a 13yr old by the now-convicted child rapist Pell. That is her excuse for his fragillity that he was recovering from. That is her excuse for the addiction issues as well!
Consider how and when Milligan met him, how he finally went supported to the police and also consider he never once protected the next generation of boys from this ‘insane rapist’. Why did these 2 men lack such a fundamental duty of care? This idea of blotting it all out and getting back on with being a recovering pair of victims started 1 minute after the deranged attacks when they went back to singing without dropping a note. Utter rubbish. That just IS implausible AND the other VICTIM says on 2 occasions that he was not a victim yet he had a vital interest in being one!
You explain how this ‘in his own way pillar of society’ came to make his formal statement. Look at the rotten time line and the change from locked to unlocked.
Doubt as to his mental health is all through her junk BUT it is explained by the trauma of the sexual offending. That is her public explanation of his mental state.
My explanation by definition has to be another. Either he is a rat or a nut. I see only a little evidence that he is a rat so I conclude that the weight of evidence is that he is a nut.
And please don’t pretend to be so naive as to believe anyone in the MSM is going to call this straight let alone a rat like Milligan out to get Pell.
You can explain this idiotic story any way you like but I say it is so fanciful that it can ONLY be equaled with the idotic and MSM driven public hysteria that Lindy was put through. I never bought that utter tosh either, she had NO CASE TO ANSWER. They had to convict both parents of involment in a mad romp of a story that had no Buisness being put as an implausible collection of acusations to a court. In both instances the police have built a case and really have it all to answer in an investigation of what they have been up to.
Pell had no case to answer either because this is all LAUGHABLE, if it wasn’t so serious.
There is no sexual sense in this completely made up fantasy. It did not happen. It really could not happen. But you don’t have to be able to read well and understand it the way I do to simply concluded that NOT-Guilty is the only possible verdict because at a minimum there has to be proof beyond a reasonable doubt. The quite bizare (actually as described quite mad) attacks don’t make any ‘pedophile sense’.
I am being kind because the alternative is to believe that the complainant is a monster prepared to falsify his evidence and I have experienced plenty of people prepared to do that. It is reasonable for me to think that he may well have some form of false memory. The important points is that this case does not add up and that Milligan and the police know it and don’t care.
So we will know in a couple of months if I can see through this fog more clearly than some others, but I doubt there will ever be a MSM report on this complainants mental record (perhaps a book long in the future after he is dead explaining how such a mad case could have got to court).
I note you say ‘I expect him to get off on appeal’ but you don’t conclude that it is very important for us all that he does, because this case is one of ‘a manefestly unsafe verdict’. You are only intimating that him being rich and powerful is why he will get off.
I say it is the police and the ABC types that have a case to answer here. They are also in their own way rich and powerfull.
So your saying that you don’t have any evidence that he is a “nut job” that “… most probably another mental breakdown…” or that he has “mental troubles” you have just come to these conclusions by examining the facts of the case.
“…a minimum there has to be proof beyond a reasonable doubt.” No you are wrong. Child sexual abuse cases are not like other cases. In childhood sexual abuse cases the rules of evidence have been changed to give equal weight to the accuser they are called word on word cases and guilt is decided by a jury on which person they believe.
This is a matter for concern as the usual presumption of innocence is not there neither is proven beyond reasonable doubt it just comes down to who the jury believes. The other cause for concern is that Victoria no longer has judge only cases which are argued to be fairer than jury trials in high profile cases. As I pointed out earlier here in South Australia a 14 year old girl can say you touched her breast you go up before a judge and its your word against hers the judge rules as to whom s/he believes.
Thats the law. In the Pell case I see no breech of the law just questionable law. My reading of it is that he will get off on appeal because of the facts of the case but I thought that he wouldnt get a conviction courts often surprise me.
A lot of the Pell defenders have verged on hysteria heres a more reasonable response from within the Catholic church https://www.catholicsun.org/2019/03/08/why-defending-cardinal-pell-is-a-problem/
It can’t get much worse than the article you have recommended so (as usual) I am not surprised that you would rather not deal with the absurdity of the whole case and would rather cling to this type of trash. All this ‘respect for the authorities crap’ is beyond a joke. BTW as you well know I am not a catholic but a communist and I don’t even like the man let alone admire him. Hysteria is what you have bought into not what I am on about. Here is exactly a case that ought to have public push back and a ‘royal commission’ type enquiry into the whole deal. All of the facts of what the police did to construct such a case ought to be dragged into the light of day. But hey that is what I thought independent thinkers were supposed to do no? As usual you missed the real issues (even Arthur spotted it and published just after me as it turned out).
Blind Freddy could see Lindy and her husband were innocent. Yet you thought they had a case to answer when the police began their idiotic forensic bullshit. Just the other day another baby was just saved from exactly the same type of dingo attack (and was saved because it was a much bigger child).
You probably get this Pell case now yet you put this rubbish article up as a worthy response to ‘hysterics’ and by implication mine! Pathetic. There is nothing at all that is reasonable in this crap article that you recommend. Pell has real enemies right inside the catholic church especially from the not insubstantial politically correct tree hugging pseudoleft catholics AND also the corrupt rightist insiders.
Pell is (almost – you just have to think a little bit) self evidently convicted in a case that could not get to the starting post if it were not for the police putting a bankrupt accusation into shape rather than rejecting it as the product of a deranged mind. They actually failed (for those of us that are thinking) but somehow the jury bought the filmed evidence given by the 1 complainant on 1 occasion! They could only get away with this in our dreadful adversarial legal system as it is currently configured for this kind of case.
I am clearly saying this is as bad as the Chamberlain case; you are waffling about a good article because it serves your initial interests! You don’t want to take a clear stand and say ‘THIS CASE MAKES NO SENSE, THE JURY GOT IT COMPLETELY WRONG, police ABC etc are at fault.
Grow up and deal with what has been spelt out to you by me. I repeat I am not a Pell supporter it is just that this case is a shocker and I stood up to the hysterics from the moment I read what it was about. Don’t lecture me on the proper respect for authorities! DON’T spin a lie about conspiracies as your dreadful article does. There was no conspiracy in the Chamberlain case and there is not here but there is something wrong with what has gone on. Like minded people working towards a conviction does not equal a conspiracy.
This team of coppers that prosecuted this case were breathtakingly incompetent or up to no good take your pick until we know more, but that is what this case is about. They were out to get Pell who they believed to be a pedo from past issues and in their current ‘victory’ they have been exposed simply by the conviction when an honest and disinterested person like me took a look at the ‘facts’ and could see straight through them! The articles and book by the ABC journo Milligan can be read it is terrible and any dispassionate person could see straight through such junk.
The pseudoleft have no excuse just as they had no excuse for their actions in the many years of court appearances that I had to endure.
Pure reasoning led me to understand that the Chamberlain case was BUNK and I am just as sure now that this is not how the world works! This case is BUNK.
It is vital that democratically minded people stand up to this type of real public hysteria. You are not quite there yet and I can still only note that you think he will get off. My further questions to you are; do you want to see him walk free ASAP and not face another trial and would you like to see an investigation into the activities of the police investigators and the Milligan connection? Personally I would like to see her on the stand because she has crafted this case rather than reported it. She could have broken this open but chose to conceal what she knew didn’t add up; that is clear from the timeline and her clumsy articles.
No matter how unpleasant this is for you the clear evidence is that the victim is Pell and you are still not thinking clearly. Even if you were to set the test at the balance of probabilities, such events never happened! The complainant is therefore either mad or bad! No matter how convincing his 1 recorded testimonial event was or even how convinced he is that it happened.
It would be interesting if some enterprising ‘adult film maker’ was to recreate the main incident with a couple of smallish adult actors for everyone to see just how utterly absurd this rubbish is. Pell will go back to Rome after this farce is all over in a few months and most people will keep believing that he got off because he was rich and powerful. The police and the ABC will continue on as the pseudoleft tide! At least I’m on record as again swimming against the tide. You have only dipped your toe in.
Civil Liberties Australia estimate that 7% of people in prison convicted of major crimes are innocent. Thats 329 people. The rate of Indigenous people in prison is astronomical. These are the major issues facing our justice system. The overwhelming number of people in prison are poor and had minimal legal representation. Pell had the best law team and will be represented by a very expensive appeals team. He’s doing OK he has several ex prime ministers in his corner I feel for him but he’s number 330 on my list of prisoners needing help. The guy I was assisting who was convicted of sexual assault got the same deal as Pell but theres no expensive appeals team for him.
Some responses to the Brennan article
While sharing your wish that justice be done, Frank, I am not convinced that the complainants’ evidence is as improbable as you suggest. As a fully vested priest, I was occasionally subject to a call of nature. I had little difficulty in moving aside my chasuble and raising my alb to enable me to answer such calls. Moreover, if Pell needed a plausible excuse for abruptly departing the procession or abbreviating his greetings of parishioners after Mass, a call of nature would be the obvious one. It is also difficult to understand why complainants would expose themselves to an ordeal similar to, or indeed worse than, Pell’s if there was no substance to their complaint. This consideration too must carry due weight in any appeal about the weight of the evidence. It gives me no pleasure to see a former colleague and friend brought so low, but if we are to be a truly just society we can no longer persist in the heartless practice of dismissing the tragic stories of victims on the grounds of legal technicalities. To so persist would give the lie to our avowed commitment to put the victims first.
MICHAEL LEAHY | 26 February 2019
Why didn’t the defence tender the robes worn and demonstrate the improbability or impossibility?
Georgie | 26 February 2019
The case against Cardinal Pell seemed incredibly weak and improbable from the outset but he has been convicted by the jury and I have the greatest respect for juries. I understand the robes were in court so the jury would have been familiar with them. It is interesting that Cardinal Pell exercised his right to silence rather than venturing into the witness box. All in all this is an utter tragedy for all concerned.
Paul | 26 February 2019
Cardinal Pell must be sitting in prison thinking that he’s more like Job than any other biblical character.
He spends his life constructing and delivering arguments in defense of his faith but when those skills are needed in court his lawyer says no George keep your silence. He sits through a court case and his innocence can be virtually proven by his counsel demonstrating the impossibility of conducting a sexual act whilst wearing his arch bishops rig but they don’t. His lawyer who is reputed to be among the best cross examiners in the country, cross examines the accuser for 2 days and apparently fails to lay a glove on him. Then finally at sentencing his lawyer argues that the sex acts the Cardinal has been convicted of are at the lower end of sexually assaulting children.
Thanks PatrickM for your article. The case against Pell has always sounded absurd to me. I think it has been run in bad faith by the prosecution.
Richard Mullins portal1943@gmail.com
Heres a look at wrongful imprisonment in Australia. Yesterday I posted a mad as clip are we really censoring humor now?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YKRyNe2Mrk
Stephen Owens says:[“…a minimum there has to be proof beyond a reasonable doubt.” No you are wrong. Child sexual abuse cases are not like other cases. In childhood sexual abuse cases the rules of evidence have been changed to give equal weight to the accuser they are called word on word cases and guilt is decided by a jury on which person they believe.
This is a matter for concern as the usual presumption of innocence is not there neither is proven beyond reasonable doubt it just comes down to who the jury believes].
In other words, Stephen Owens, Pell was falsely convicted, as Andrew Bolt pointed out when the result of the trials as made public.
Richard Mullins portal1943@gmail.com
Richard; I think that quote demonstrates just how Steve and the jury could get it so wrong. The implication is that we have a double system in criminal law and we just don’t. Whoever is believed by the jury member does not alter that person’s responsibility to hold his view to a standard of beyond any reasonable doubt because if there is any reasonable doubt that the jury member can entertain then that benefit MUST be delivered to the accused. So the situation is that a person must be found NOT guilty even if the juror thinks he probably did it! Evidence is not to be decided on the balance of probability. If you can conceive of being wrong that is the end of it. The presumption of innocence remains in place; it is not thrown out the window!
An equal weight given to the evidence does not generate an equal outcome from that evidence. The person who you think probably did the crime you are required to set free if you can retain any reasonable doubt that the trial begins with as the accused begins all trials with the presumption of innocence that the prosecution must overcome with proof beyond any reasonable doubt!
The Pell case utterly fails the basic tests of what is STILL our legal system. The verdict is thus unsafe and this is quite obvious to me. But I am not a great defender of our ruling classes current legal system as it unfolds in practice and so we all can now hold our breath as the decision can’t be that far off I would have thought. If it goes past another week or two I would think it a bad sign so I guess I am expecting the outcome in about that time frame. We will see. Patrick
I think that you guys have a point in that my explaining of the law is from a very laypersons understanding. I followed the case in the media and was surprised at the guilty verdict because I did not believe that a person would be sent to prison on the uncorroborated testimony of one other person. However this is the situation under current law. It does seem that there are two standards and I think Pell may be released if the argument about the impracticability of the crime holds but not because its against the law for one witnesses testimony to hold up.
The appeal 2:1.
Well obviously I am as good a judge as at least 1 of the Vic supreme court 3.
The body language was very clear. The dissenting judge had been trying to get the other 2 to see reason for months. I had been concerned with the time and had only recently begun to hope that what was a split was going to be resolved by convincing argument; but it was never likely.
If it had been split 2:1 the other way judgement would have come down months ago (as it ought to have). This is what I expected from today.
I wish Pell well in any future appeal to the high court but have grave doubts.
This case further highlights that our legal system is appalling and ought be root and branch replaced by the inquisitorial system.
Bring on the revolution!
This case is not yet as bad but I can’t see much of a way forward because we would require a ‘matinee jacket’ to get these characters to backdown. It just reminded me that Lindy lost all the way despite the insanity (and obviously total fantasy) of the entire case.
https://lindychamberlain.com/the-story/timeline-of-events/
The comparison between the Pell case and the Chamberlain case is problematic. Chamberlain from memory was convicted on bogus forensic evidence. Pell has been convicted in line with the law. The law in sexual abuse cases gives the accuser substantial advantages and the verdict seems to rely on who the jury thinks is more credible. That the prosecution couldnt even name the date that the offenses occurred I would have thought would have introduced reasonable doubt but not so.
The full bench of the high court (7 judges) is to consider if the appeal ought to be heard; I presume then that all 7 would if granted hear the appeal.
4+ judges have to then find in Pell’s favour for him to walk free! Good luck to him, because this looks like a big ask.
On the other hand the high court can do what it likes and this case stinks. The ABC driven hysteria is full on and currently all over social media as well (apparently).
Totally unpredictable!
I’ve just read all the reasons and am now a bit more confident that this terrible conviction will be thrown over by the high court.
The dissenting judge totally beat the other 2 up and his 200+ pages has done all that is required to explain to any High Court why this case demands a result in Pell’s favour. A conviction to the standard ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’ has not been achieved and quite obviously so.
The high court pair have also been very clever in not just accepting that an appeal ought to be heard! They have made the full bench (and that could be all 7 or just 5)fully responsible for declaring that this case had to be heard and then dealing with it imediately! So because that method is the very fastest way to get it heard and Pell set free I think that is why they chose it.
It was this thought that gave me greater confidence that people have not all gone mad. After all Weinberg made these 2 listen to what the HC had done to Lindy.
Only Dean had dissented in that case and then only mildly so. It was Dean who put mine and Arthur’s cases up for the full bench, but then he was made GG and did not himself hear it.
The whole lot had got it totally wrong with Lindy. Weinberg was not going to let the ball drop with this case. His dissenting reasons are a tour of exactly what the high court must consider. He rubbed their noses in it!
I also note that several academic lawyers are now speaking up and the Catholic Church is now far more solidly behind Pell.
The ABC now has zero credibility over Pell and their role in funding Milligan etc. The liberals are only starting to catch on. But Howard and Abbott stood up and could not be expected to have done much more.
Andrew Bolt has called this out for what it is and that is an impossible case. But that is what it is. The 15th of December has 3 people saying Pell was not there at the time and that time was 6 tiny minutes (taken with all the other evidence a solid Alibi)and the 22nd had choir practice after mass so that refutes the complainant who said he went straight home and he would not have 3 days before Christmas. The complainant is an unreliable whiteness.
I also noted in passing a little matter of why the money was not followed. Where were the collectors? Where were the (adult) Altar servers? They have all just vanished!
The room really was a ‘hive of activity’ and yet STILL such twaddle was upheld as beyond a doubt that could or should be reasonably held!
I only got 1 of the three but the best of the reading!
‘This Hiatus, This Gap’ in Quadrant, is a great article by Keith Windshuttle. It proves (for those who can count to 10) that there was no opportunity for the ‘crimes’ of Pell that are supposed to be now proven, to have ever happened. Bolt has made the same point.
So given that it is not open to any jury to just vanish people that were at the scene at the actual time and have sworn that no such crimes took place then I now think that the High Court will unanimously find in Pell’s favour.
After that (guess is April-May) there really has to be an enquiry into the police that brought this shocking case into existence. The vic premier is not well placed to bring that on given his role and stand, so….bUT the HC will have to be very critical of the police who could have exposed this complaint very quickly if they had done an even half serious job.
The ABC has a lot to answer for as well.
I wonder if the Liberals will be game enough to take them both on?
https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2019/10/pells-new-appeal-and-this-hiatus-this-gp/
Pell should go free because there is no evidence against him Windshuttle is a moron dont you think that Pell’s defense team presented the minute by minute account. The catholic church paid top dollar for that defense team and top dollar for that appeals team boy they might as well have sent that money to victims of priest abuse.
The catholic church as far as I can see is either a pedophile ring or a protection society for pedophiles no other organisation would be able to operate with this level of child abuse its time to close the catholic church down but I agree let Pell go.
More indications that J is a nut job! https://www.academia.edu/40967330/IN_THE_HIGH_COURT_OF_AUSTRALIA and a good few points to ponder on current law.