The High Court of Australia might have freed Cardinal George Pell but that can’t conceal the fact that Pell has openly and publicly raped children psychologically for decades by supporting paedophile priests and denying victims justice and proper compensation.
George Pell psychologically raped victims (as per the below picture) in 1993 when he went to court as a support person (Bishop George Pell, then an auxiliary bishop in Melbourne), when Father Ridsdale was pleading guilty to his first batch of criminal charges in May 1993 for sexually abusing children. But no bishop accompanied the victims, who felt deserted by the church leaders. (Click here to read more)
Confessed paedophile Gerard Ridsdale and his supporter George Pell go to court
George Pell psychologically raped victims when he set up a dodgy compensation scheme to make sure survivors received a minimal amount of compensation and were silenced for life to hide the crimes of priests and the Church.
George has a long history of lying and was caught out on camera in the 2002 interview on 60 Minutes with reporter Richard Carlton. In that interview, George Pell said aggressively that he did not offer a victim $50,000 to settle with the Church. Richard Carlton then produced a letter of offer from the Church’s law firm saying words to the effect that “we represent George Pell and are offering you $50,000 to settle the matter.”
George Pell psychologically raped victims when in 1997 Cardinal George Pell said to the parents of abuse victims who were whistleblowing on 5 paedophile priests: “We won’t believe any of this. It’s all gossip until it’s proven in court”. It’s one of many examples of George Pell covering up for paedophile priests over many years with some saying he was involved in the cover-ups as far back at the 1970’s. (Click here to read more)
In the below video is Anthony and Christine Foster who had 2 daughters abused by a priest. They fought the church for 9 years to get compensation. Pell said to them regarding paedophile priests: “We won’t believe any of this. It’s all gossip until it’s proven in court”
George Pell had another allegation that he sexually abused a child swept under the carpet by the Church in 2002 by an investigation paid for and run by the Church. At the time Archbishop George Pell had to step aside as Archbishop while the investigation took place.
“In October 2002, the Catholic Church in Australia posted on its official website a document entitled Report of an inquiry into an allegation of sexual abuse against Archbishop George Pell. The report was compiled by a retired Victorian Supreme Court judge, Mr A.J. Southwell Q.C., who had been engaged by the Catholic Church to conduct an inquiry into the allegation. The inquiry was held in Melbourne in September-October 2002. Mr M. Tovey Q.C. appeared for the complainant and Mr J. Sher Q.C. appeared for George Pell.”
“The details of the complaint are as follows: at the camp, during some form of activity in a tent (such as pillow fighting or wrestling), the respondent, while facing the complainant, put his hand down the inside of the complainant’s pants and got “a good handful” of his penis and testicles. There were other altar boys in the tent at the time, who were participating in the other playful activities. The complainant was shocked, since before that incident he had regarded the respondent as “a fun person, a gentle person, a kind person, he was a terrific bloke”. On each of the few occasions this occurred, the complainant pulled the respondent’s hand away. On two occasions, in a tent, the respondent took the complainant’s hand, and guided it down the front of and inside the respondent’s pants; the complainant pulled his hand away without having touched the respondent’s genitals. In another incident, which “is not as clear as the other episodes”, they were in the water, jumping the waves, when from one side the respondent put his hand down and inside the complainant’s bathers and touched his genitals.”
“On another occasion, during a walk away from the camp at night, they were walking in Indian file when the respondent grabbed the complainant from behind and put his hand down and inside of the complainant’s pants.” (Click here to read more)
It was reported in the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper at the time:
“Even if George Pell is completely exonerated, should he – and the Catholic Church – bear some responsibility for his present circumstance? Deborah Snow reports.”
“Black-clad, resolute, Australia’s foremost warrior-churchman, Archbishop George Pell, stood outside St Mary’s Cathedral this week and vowed to challenge the “lies” which have forced him to step aside. It was a typically defiant response from the Vatican’s hard man in Australia, who’s forged a career out of carrying the fight to opponents both inside and outside the Catholic Church.”
“The charges are grave – that more than 40 years ago, as a trainee priest, Pell sexually molested a 12-year-old boy. If you take the archbishop at his word, his outrage is natural.”
“But as one senior priest observed, “He could have framed his statement of innocence in a way that was less confrontational with his accuser. He could have left the door open for the complainant to decide he’d got it wrong. But now the complainant’s been branded a liar, that’s an unlikely outcome.”” (Click here to read more)
“After a church-appointed inquiry, Pell said he was grateful to God to have been exonerated.”
“In fact, retired Victorian Supreme Court judge Alec Southwell had said that both Pell and his accuser gave the impression they were speaking the truth. Taking into account questions about the accuser’s credibility (he had a criminal record) and the fact that the alleged incidents occurred so long ago, Southwell found he was “not satisfied that the complaint had been established”.” (Click here to read more)
The retired Victorian Supreme Court judge Alec Southwell was on the Church’s payroll as it was an internal Church inquiry so he was hardly impartial. The full report was put on the Churches website in 2002 but has since been taken down. Part of it can be read on the Broken Rites Australia website. (Click here to read)
“Tony Abbott hadn’t waited for the judge’s decision. “It should not surprise any Christian that there would be people who want to make unfair, wrong, mischievous, malevolent accusations against the strongest and most public Christian of the time,” the politician said when the allegations were first aired. “I’m more than ready to accept Pell’s testimony.”
Previous history of allegations and cover-ups by George Pell – (Click here to read previous articles on this website)
Pell basically started his career in Ballarat Victoria and right from the start the cover-ups were going on all around him but he says he saw nothing. The Guardian says:
Young Pell was plucked from Australia to train in Rome and at Oxford for the big career that was always beckoning. He returned to serve briefly and unhappily in a remote parish on the Murray before being brought into the heart of the diocese of Ballarat which was a hell of child abuse.
Pell swears he saw little or nothing in those years.
Strange that the career of a man who would climb so far and so fast was marked early on by such a want of curiosity. He would explain to Australia’s royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse: “It was a sad story and of not much interest to me.”
He sat on a committee that transferred Father Gerard Ridsdale from parish to parish. The crimes of this vicious paedophile were notorious in Ballarat, known to the bishop and familiar to other members of the committee. But by his own account, Pell never asked why this priest was always on the move. (Click here to read more)
Pell turns a blind eye to paedophiles and caught lying about it
“As archbishop of Melbourne, he allowed a priest found to have sexually abused a teenager after officiating at his mother’s funeral to continue working in another parish. In Sydney, he said in a letter to a man named Anthony Jones that the priest who sexually assaulted him had been the subject of no other complaints, when in fact Pell had written to another of the priest’s victims that same day. The letter to Jones was “badly worded and a mistake”, he said later.” (Click here to read more) It was not a mistake, it was clearly a lie and cover-up and Pell was caught out. (Click here to read more)
Where there is smoke there is fire and there is a raging bush fire around George Pell when it comes to allegations he is a paedophile.
The High Court of Australia judgement – (Click here to read the summary)
As 3 people said on Twitter:
The HC is simply saying that there wasn’t enough evidence to the requisite standard. Not that he is innocent. A subtle but important distinction.
and:
The High Court wanted the jury and CA to weigh more favourably the evidence from Pell’s friends and colleagues who gave evidence … Shocking outcome for victims … Why would they ever put faith in the justice “system”?
and:
Now paedophile priests across the globe have a fresh mandate to assault and abuse children without fear of retribution. Well done. A horribly dangerous precedent.
Australia’s paedophile epidemic has been covered-up by judges for years so the High Court of Australia judgment should not surprise. “In a speech on the 13th of April 2017 the Chairman of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, The Hon Justice Peter McClellan AM, raised issues regarding the failure of judges and prosecutors to do their jobs properly and therefore fail victims of child sex abuse.” (Click here to read more)
I published an article in March 2019 titled “Australian paedophile support ring, which includes 2 former PM’s, out themselves in their support of George Pell“. The judges of the High Court are appointed by the federal government with the Prime Minister having the final say. So did 2 former Prime Ministers publicly supporting Pell have an influence on the High Court judges?
There have been numerous media reports that George Pell is facing civil proceedings from several victims which if true means his problems are far from over. If Pell settles that will be an admission of guilt and if he doesn’t settle the court cases will be extremely damaging to him and the Church.
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Categories: Cardinal George Pell, High Court of Australia
It is one thing to salvage the reputation and sanctity of the institution you believe to be the sole representation of God and a completely different thing to rape children. The two are mutually exclusive.
This is only a big win for kiddy fiddlers world wide.
As a lawyer, when I heard that the High Court had overturned Pell’s conviction, I thought there must be some compelling legal reason. But there wasn’t. I am staggered. The vast majority of the public claim child sex abuse is wrong, yet we have a legal system that makes convictions for sex abuse almost impossible. Many jurors are already confused that “beyond reasonable doubt” means “no doubt whatsoever” and this judgement reinforces that confusion, especially in sex abuse cases. Wish I had never wasted my time training in law. What a disgusting, corrupt so-called legal system. Glad this website helps expose some of the rot and has helped to open my eyes. I feel completely foolish for ever thinking we had a good system in this country. Thankfully started having serious doubts in law school but they are still years of my life I can never get back.
Amber Would love to utilise your legal knowledge for good and take on these systems head on if your interested… set precedents that will keep them all honest when nothing else can… thanks KCA for putting everything always on the line…👍
Unfortunately we live in the land of the pirates law. It has taken me about fifteen years to figure that one out. This joint is modeled off the British East India Company dates back to the rape of India about 1750 then they moved into Australia and set up shop here with a genocide. A bunch of real nice fellows.
There is no respect for families or our communities within the Australian Judicial System only money for themselves. I bet if there had been another level of appeal the judges would have kept it going to feed the lawyer vultures!
Thanks for that information, Diarmuid, you are right. When there is a bad judgement or examples of police corruption and brutality, we are all surprised and dismayed. But as Aboriginal people remind us, Australia has always been this way. It was built on a rotten legal foundation to begin with and continues to be rotten. The system treats Aboriginal people, the disabled, the poor, the uneducated and the socially isolated very differently to the rich, powerful and well-connected. It’s just that for us typically middle-class people we think that our system works well for most of the people most of the time. Perhaps the Pell decision will cause some reflection.
I just found your website.
As a lawyer you should know better about unsafe convictions. Your emotion has nothing to do with the facts. Like Pell or hate him is not the point. The High Court found that the conviction was unsafe, not innocent or guilty but unsafe by a unanimous decision of 7 High Court judges. The compelling reason was ‘unsafe’ uncorroborated. If you want that system fine, but don’t complain when you are convicted on the say so of a person who hates you or has another agenda. The law should not discriminate. If you are a defence lawyer, you have practised what you are opposing here, for a fee. Judges go to great lengths to explain to juries what is ‘reasonable’ that is their role as well as other points of law. Our system is not perfect but far outweighs a communist or sharia system. Consider yourself lucky in the circumstances.
If this industry that proclaims it provides the community with Justice were in any way credible it would not be self regulated, it would also be transparent in the search for truth so as we the people could trust it. In 2009 the Victorian Ombudsman did an investigation into the Legal Services Commissioner of Victoria. This is the lawyer run body that investigates complaints against lawyers, “by the way you cannot complain about a judge or the court” If you try they will throw you in jail.
This report was never tabled in parliament and is the lawyers reason for keeping it secret. I have recently sat in on a criminal trail where this report was requested because the Victorian Legal Services Commission is accusing one of its customers of threats to kill? The Legal Services Commission claimed that the report should not be presented to the accused because it would not be in the public interest and is supposedly in the magistrates court in a sealed envelope. When one sees the terrible manipulations that are occurring at the bottom of the turgid waters of the Justice swamp in Australia the Goerge Pell, The High Court of Australia and the Victorian Judicial Structure have all proved their incompetence. This system needs to be deconstructed and rebuilt from the ground up. It needs a peoples assembly free of lawyers to do it and it is a top priority for this nation if we are going to successfully rebuild after this current crisis.
Thanks Melody for finding my web site.
Confusing how communist or sharia law is considered the worst in the world until it becomes useful to excuse the defects in Australia’s legal system. If we have one of the best systems in the world, why compare it to sub-standard legal systems at all. There is no definition of “reasonable doubt” in the common law system. It is up to the jury to decide whether the reasonable doubt test has been met, and it is up to the jury to decide whether they have actual doubts about the evidence, not whether they SHOULD have had doubts in theory, but whether they DID have doubts in fact. There is a role for the High Court to overturn cases when there has been wrongdoing by lawyers, or corrupted evidence and so on, but the reasons for overturning the jury’s verdict in the Pell case were as thin as paper. As long as we claim to be the lucky country and compare ourselves to the worse systems in the world, we fail to see how bad things are becoming in this country, which claims to be a democracy and to have one of the best systems in the world. You don’t base your standards or your actions on those you don’t want to be like and those you oppose, if you are aiming for the best standards.
Pell has destroyed his own reputation. That is not the point. The point is that the Pell decision says there is no way of effectively and consistently proving childhood sexual assault cases. If the legal system cannot protect children who need the community’s protection, what is the point of this system? This combined with other worrying trends, such as the prosecution of Witness K and (unbelievably) his lawyer, court cases being held in complete secrecy (Witness J, not the Pell Witness J, another one), the prosecution of Richard Boyle, and so on.
If the community wants to keep the reasonable doubt test the way it is, that is fine, but then there needs to be some other way for dealing with paedophilla cases otherwise, like Pell, they walk free and feel unassailable.
Probe Bono, I wonder sincerely, not as a rhetorical question, why it is that a housewife from Tasmania has been sentenced to life in prison based on a very badly run criminal trial, and why the Bowraville Murders case that was botched due to racism (as admitted by a senior detective), cannot get a thorough review by the High Court, yet Australia’s most senior Catholic, with all the money and public relations in the world, can walk free from prison.
So what the High Court is really saying is that apparently the whole legal system is so fragile and so prone to vexatious litigants that finding guilt on the basis on victim testimony is not enough because there is no way to properly tell a vexatious litigant from a real child sex abuse victim, even though, paradoxically, the rigorous cross-examination in court is supposed to be the best system in the world. This judgement will actually taint the High Court with Pell’s crimes.
The rate of false complaint in legal cases is around 2% for all crimes, including sex assault. The conviction rate of innocent people based on false claims is even lower. Yet the conviction rates for sex abuse is the lowest of all crimes that go to trial, as though the legal system treats all victims as liars.
Exactly. Why do we even bother having a jury of peers if their opinion means nothing?
From what I have read the jury took over three days to come to their verdict & returned to the judge numerous times for clarification of points & to ask questions. Then after all that their time, effort & opinion means nothing due to little more than a technicality.
It seems juries are just for the poor & uneducated who don’t have the money or resources to keep going through the judicial system till they get a verdict they want.
I would like to know the religions of the judges of the high court judges involved in this decision
I’m not sure what is worse – seeing lawyers try to reassure themselves that actually the legal system is fine because the Pell case was decided on supposedly very specific points of law, or well-meaning reporters, like Rick Morton on ABC, saying that “all of it can be true, the victim can be believable but there wasn’t enough evidence” Please spare us “everything can be true” or “everyone’s memories are valid.”
And please spare us former NSW Judge saying paedophiles still being convicted of crimes every day of the week in court. What a joke. They rarely stand trial and they are rarely convicted.
Most twisted of all is saying that if there is a god he will judge Pell, so he might have got away with it legally but he won’t get away with it in the end.
So really god, karma, wishing corona on Pell etc… has to be invented to make the community feel better that in effect it is legally powerless to stop paedophiles.
Children and the disabled are the people most in need of legal protection and yet when they are abused we supposedly have to resort to appealing to god for final judgement. Injustice proves there is a god who will then provide justice so we’re supposed to believe in god to get justice from those who claim to represent god because there’s no remedy from the legal system.
Having watched Episode 3 of Revelation by UK journalist Sarah Ferguson only 2 or 3 days ago and now to see it pulled out from the ABC series, I am just furious.
The victim who became suicidal because of what Pell did to him is clearly telling the truth and has suffered all of his life.
I can only hope that he will now accept the Police’s Case against Pell. – He was to have been one of the witnesses in the Pell Trial, but had to withdraw at the last moment as he was breaking down with the fear of coming face to face with this monster, his tormentor in Court.
Can you possibly have a word with Sarah Ferguson – I am sure that she will fill you in and so give this poor man the support he needs to take his case to Court, and put the Evil excuse for a Priest, away for good. Sarah was very comforting towards this victim who was in tears as some of the old memories surfaced again for him. The story of what he and the other boys at that Catholic School went through is absolutely horrific.
In the episode all about Pell other witnesses came forward and all said much the same thing about a man they were told to believe because he was a priest, despite what he was doing to them.
Sarah even interviewed a priest who had been with Pell, I think when they studied in the Vatican. That Priest described Pell as Arrogant and a Bully.
See – https://iview.abc.net.au/show/revelation and:-
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/live/2020/apr/07/cardinal-george-pell-high-court-decision-appeal-latest-verdict-live-news?page=with:block-5e8bdd108f08c35a1d11b472
This is no longer solely a fight for Secular Governments – in every country, but the dire necessity to rid the World of a great EVIL!
I agree.. the Revelation series should be seen by everyone. Could the last one not being available now, be related to future legal proceedings?
I just read they are re-editing it because of Pell’s acquittal and will put it back up here: https://iview.abc.net.au/show/revelation
This ruling just shows the Australian public what they already know, that the Australian legal system is out of touch with the expectations of Australian society. The high court has completely missed the Bondi tram.
The courts needs to stop fulfilling the wills of cultists and start representing the will of the nation. True Australians should not respect this high court ruling in opposition to the Hillsong sect member Scott Morrison and his cronies.
Throw all these evil bastards in a pit and let them rot. It is time to grab a pitch fork.
I wonder how many of the High Court Judges (7 of) might be paedophiles ???
Anthropomorphism will not protect anyone from the evil actions of evil human beings, that is what honest, judgmental lawyers and judges are paid to do.
In our society, honest judgmental lawyers and judges do not exist, and in Australia, supposedly founded on a Christian ‘faith’, but good people without a religious belief still abide by number 5 to number 10 of the Commandments, but even that foundation has been destroyed by evil human beings.
In the Susan Neil-Fraser case, the accused was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison despite there being no body, weapon, or motive. The jury was given incorrect evidence about the supposed presence of blood and a homeless girl admitted to being at the crime scene and her DNA was found there. Yet the High Court wouldn’t allow an appeal because they would not interfere with the jury’s guilty verdict. Whether Neill-Fraser is guilty or not, the evidence was woefully inadequate. This case along with others in the book “Murder by the Prosecution” by Andrew L. Urban plainly demonstrates how broken Australia’s legal system really is.
There are people serving long prison terms on flimsy or no evidence but Pell gets to walk free.
Australia needs a bill of rights, strong cross-media ownership laws and a federal independent commission against corruption.
I love the way the High Court said that the witness was credible and then dismissed his evidence. This is an absolute joke.
I only hope the 2 latest men to accuse Pell of sexual misconduct come foreward now with official complaints. I wouldnt blame them if they didnt in light of the latest events.
Pell and his cronies have got away with this for years as has been well documented in the above article. A big cosy pedophile club protected from the top.
Oh there were quite a few who came forward and gave evidence. The DPP decided not to go ahead with their cases and just ran with the ones they thought they could get a conviction for. All the others have been left on the road side as waste, after the DPP were the one’s that tracked them down, knocked on their doors and made them relive the horrors of that dirty pig.
No one was complaining about the DPP when the court of appeal upheld the conviction. At least the DPP was trying to catch and prosecute that grub. The grub himself has to bear full responsibility for it all.I feel for the victims though. The legal process is just a machine that churns people up and spits them out.
The DPP is a machine that picks and chooses it’s battles. It prefers wins over losses, a good newspaper headline and a pat on the back. We don’t complain when the DPP does something and wins, that is their job. It does it every day.
Pell was a high profile target which makes a good headline. You could argue that the DPP were “witch hunting” but that is exactly what they do for a job. However just because they do witch hunt doesn’t mean the perpetrator was not a “witch”. So complaining about “witch hunting” with the DPP is like complaining about water being wet.
It seems to me it is only a “witch hunt” when they lose. I don’t see the DPP losing nor winning in the Pell case, the High Court decided that it was indeterminable if Pell was a “witch” because they decided that the jury was not using a duck scale* and in their absurdity let him free.
* Hats off to Monty Python – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTdDN_MRe64
The DPP probably have a checklist to figure out what to bring to court that errs in their benefit. This does two things for them: keep costs down by keeping hard things out of court and gives them more wins than losses. It is good for PR when it is seen to be successful, a good use of tax payer funds.
We complain when they lose because — “how dare they waste our tax money on witch hunts!”
Behind door crimes are not an easy win so the DPP generally keeps them at an arms length away. The flipside of this is that victims of these crimes suffer in silence without justice. The system is geared against them because it is geared to economy not truth.
To the DPP, truth is only the truth when it is makes them look good, because as tax payers we expect them to look good. So they give us what we want, not what we need. To give us what we need we need to enable the DPP to do so, that at the moment is a political issue not judicial.
Very few of the Royal Commission’s recommendations into child abuse have been made at the political level in all states equally. And I believe that some of those recommendations are watered down and still not enough.
This High Court ruling is only going to reinforce the reluctance of the DPP to touch behind closed door crimes going forward. Abused children and others will continue to suffer at the tax payers profit.
I would say that is not very Australian that we allow this to happen, but maybe I am wrong and to be a prick is what it means to be Australian. I do come across more of them than I would like.
If you don’t like it, ask your local polly what they are doing about it. I am guessing not much.
Australian political apathy is a curse we seem to be proud of.
The Victorian DPP decides on who it prosecutes and who it does not. If you are a lawyer 999 times out of 1000 you are safe, the same applies for all others in a position of power. This system also works in reverse, when a person in a position of power such as an organisation like the Victorian Legal Services Commissioner that exists to protect the legal profession, gets a difficult client that threatens their power it is possible for them to create an unsubstantiated story about threats to kill. If that person happens to have brown skin we see the DPP, the police, the hand picked magistrates, the lawyers and the judges working together to manipulate due process against an unrepresented person in order to secure a conviction so as to protect there interests.
If the law is this technical and granulated it needs a review. The Pell judgment is saying ordinary people can’t understand the law anymore and serve on a jury.
Pell the perverted priest has been let off by whom ? Lets have full disclosure of the backgrounds of those men and or women whom frocked-up and be-wigged themselves not unlike priests to
declare Pell innocent. No error at law came forth ! Having viewed those pitiful men whom these devout priests preyed upon whilst they were laughing uncomplicated innocent boys shatters ones belief in humanity. These numerous children cannot have made it all up. As a nine year old I narrowly escaped the clutches of a deviate pedophile and his beguile. I feel the same about Pell
.
I can’t understand why Pell hasn’t been charged with offering an inducement to conceal a crime….
Yes this is a good question John May
It was so obviously a witch hunt. The man is innocent, and deserves an apology. The Victorian legal system has been shown to be corrupt.
Sadly, i know of a family from Ballarat whose child was molested by him and the boy had a tough life after that. Pell will burn in hell if Christianity is correct.
Jack I would agree with you on the presence of corruption in the Victorian legal system, but a jury is a collection of Australian citizens, it was their decision.
This high court ruling dangerously undermines the last bastion that regular people have authority in the outcomes of crimes.
This ruling basically allows for crimes that happen behind closed doors, no matter how strong the credibility of the evidence, to potentially not be prosecutable in Australia unless you have a witness.
Rapists, violent abusers and other behind door criminals rejoice.
This High Court ruling is not just about Pell’s innocence it is about how such crimes are treated in the future. And it is looking very dim.
If you believe in the real world, many jury members make decisions based on many other reasons other than what they truly believe.
Following KCoA for many years one learns many political, legal, and corruption facts which otherwise would not be brought to light.
So what do you suggest? Get rid of jurors and leave the decisions to a bunch of corruptible civic technocrats? That is a real world I would not like to have. There is a balance required, that is why we have a jury system.
You say “many jury members make decisions based on many other reasons other than what they truly believe”. Where do you get that statistic from?
Just as an idea, maybe High Court rulings should be weighed upon by the public at large before being accepted. A public High Court jury so to speak. Then 7 individual judges in a room cannot be allowed to determine what is good for a nation as a whole. Only the nation can do that. So put all High Court rulings to a referendum.
Currently there is no true judicial balance in the Australian High Court.
Yes Bowl of Cornflakes, a High Court public jury might be an improvement because, at the moment, Australia seems to have neither a jury system that is respected by the High Court, or an investigative, judge-based system that some European countries have. Perhaps for cases such as sexual assault, a High Court public jury should be comprised of those who have suffered sexual assault, or at least they could help with advice. For what I can gather, it seems most sexual assault victims/survivors want truth rather than revenge, and don’t want others to suffer. It’s theoretically possible that some members of the High Court have suffered childhood sexual abuse, but based on the Pell decision, they seem like a bunch of mollycoddled middle class lawyers who cannot accept that the world is different to how they think it is, so they rule that a priest could not have gone unnoticed for 5 minutes to abuse someone because if he had, that would be a world gone wrong, and they can’t accept that.
There was talk at some stage in the media of Victoria setting up specialist domestic violence, family and sexual assault courts that do not use the adversarial model of litigation. Haven’t heard that spoken about recently. It is the very least the State of Victoria could do to thank witness J for reporting Pell’s crime and all the others who have suffered abuse and reported it. .
Re-name Pell the criminal, Cardinal Sin.
Paul Bongiorno
@PaulBongiorno
Columnist for The Saturday Paper and veteran political journalist. His views contestable but his own.
Why has not Paul Bonjiorno been asked what he knew during his time as a young priest, living in the same accomodation houses as George Pell.
If George Pell knew as much as your contributors suggest, then Paul Bonjiorno also knew.
There are people on social media saying they are not sure whether they want to remain Catholics or not.
All I can suggest is they read “The Case of the Pope” by Geoffery Robertson QC.
It is short book and provides history and cogent evidence for the way the Church operates with regard to paedophilia. Most local libraries have a copy, some probably on-line.
Weigh the evidence for yourselves.
This is a postmodern decision by the High Court where apparently all things are true at the same time, even though in an adversarial system like Australia’s there is only one set of facts which can be true.
Thank you to the journalists and victims who have spoken publicly, and thanks to this website.
The Church not only rape the community’s children, they use our tax dollars to fund their schools, organizations etc…. and they pay no tax on their properties. Australians through the tax system is subsidizing the assault of its own children by these church people.
It is a cult.
I was the same age as Pell’s victims in this case, and a very similar thing happened to me. The abuse happened very quickly while other adults were present in the same house. It took about the same amount of time as someone getting up from the table at a dinner party and excusing themselves to go to the bathroom. Don’t tell me Pell never excused himself after Mass and went to his sacristy for 5 or 10 minutes without his attendants.
I feel sick seeing the so-called left-wing mainstream media having legal experts telling abuse victims not to be put off by the Pell decision. I went to court 25 years later and the offender took a plea deal after going through the lower courts.
I was to consider myself lucky with this result. The mainstream media do not know what they are talking about. It is just insulting.
There are Catholics on both sides of my family and there has been one suicide related to priest abuse. When the person took it to court he received a death threat and then committed suicide. Victims at the Royal Commission also reported receiving death threats from people claiming to be connected with the Catholic Church. Four other of my family members have been abused by priests when they were boys and their lives went off the rails. They will never report it and are nearing the end of their lives.
I will continue on and don’t want a pity party but my fervent wish is that these 7 members of the High Court never have one minute of peace for the rest of their lives.
@Brian Hearing you mate. Stand strong. I am in a similar circumstance. Will not go into details. Any victims here feeling a bit ruffled/triggered by all this please seek some some professional help if required. I know you may already know what to do by now, not trying to patronize anyone. I just have been to the edge waaay too many times and know it is bloody difficult. Being on your own unpaid suicide watch is a PITA. Getting help helps.
Thanks Bowl of Cornflakes. I’m ok. I don’t feel patronized by you. Just frustrated that the community is supposed to accept a legal decision with a double meaning. The double meaning is, “We believe the victim’s testimony is credible but the perpetrator can go free” and “Please don’t take this personally as a victim, as it was just the facts of this particular case.”
Well, this is also exactly what abusers say to their victims. “I didn’t mean to hurt you, please don’t take it personally, but by the way, don’t bother telling anyone because no one will believe you and it’s just your word against mine, there’s not enough evidence.”
That is the essence of the problem. But thank you for saying get help etc… I am alright but just frustrated that once again the victims/survivours/ those speaking up are being told to adjust their thinking to accept the result of the Court’s decision or to get help if they are triggered. We are not the ones that need help. They are. The members of the High Court and Catholic Church and politicians are the ones that need the help. Yet they cannot see it and seems like they never will.
The jury in Pell’s case saw the truth. We have to rely on our fellow citizens to see the truth for themselves.
@Brian Totally agree with you. It is however important that our fellow citizens not only see the truth but speak up about what they see. If we all start speaking as a nation it will ground swell.
Yes Cornflakes spot on. I hope more of the nation wakes up.
When our judicial system makes a gross and incorrect judgment it is seen as supposed proof that it is a robust and independent system.
And we have a powerful worldwide organization, the only official theocracy in the world and one with United Nations membership, that has, as its symbol, a person being tortured and sacrificed.
Human blood sacrifice to clean wrongdoing.
It is hidden in plain sight and because we are conditioned with that image of human sacrifice from childhood, many people don’t see it for what it really is or what it actually represents.
Astronomers now tell us that there are TWO trillion galaxies, each with from one billion to a 100 billion stars, in the known universe…
It’s 2020, we now know that god is impossible, the whole god story belongs with fairey tales!
Glad there are at least two trillion galaxies. Yes god is a load of nonsense that these sick men have built a church around in order to have access to children. It really hit home when reading about the Roman emperors engaging in wide-scale pedophilia at their residences where hundreds of children were abused during huge drunken parties. The last surviving part of the ancient Roman Empire became the Catholic Church. Some of the traditions the Church uses are directly from that time, such as the coloured smoke being used to announce a new leader has been chosen.
When growing up, I thought there was little evidence for evolution by natural selection. It turns out there is stacks of evidence, not just a few fossils. It’s never too late to become educated. If there ever was a god, it/she/he would have been smart enough to make itself redundant, become extinct, and to disappear.
It is a platitude to say that the Pell decision shouldn’t stop victims from reporting abuse. No one explains how historical child abuse crimes can be successfully prosecuted now. Many child abuse victims cannot comprehend or speak about the abuse until decades later and the very nature of the crime usually means there are no other witnesses.
But apparently the failure to prosecute these crimes is ok with the majority of society based on the unfounded paranoia of fake claims flooding the courts.
Love how the corporate media are saying that Pell was the victim of a witch hunt but that he has also been cleared by the court process. So they are saying he received a fair trial but was also subject to an unfair witch hunt. Bizarre.
So while the rest of us are self-isolating, I just read that Pell had a police escort from Melbourne to Sydney yesterday, presumably at tax-payers’ expense. I don’t think I’ve felt this cross since the High Court ruled that a stateless person can be kept in immigration jail forever. Don’t think I’ll be accepting jury duty any time soon.
@Probe Bono – Spoken like a true technocrat. The problem with that attitude is that it is elitist and needs to be kept in check. You see when you tell someone “consider yourself lucky” indicating it could be worse, is the same as saying “accept the status quo serf”
Well to that I say “f*ck you sir” because as humans we can do better than that. We don’t have to accept the status quo, we can make it better.
7 potentially corruptible, and unelected but appointed civic technocrats should not be making decisions that harm victims (citizens) of crime for the sake of a single indeterminable innocence. At the most all that was required for a technical fault was a retrial, not a get out of jail free card for a single individual and the potential for many victims of childhood abuse fearing the system that should be protecting and defending them.
This may be a small smug intellectual footnote for the high court but a massive moral failure of our judicial system. The judiciary should be a servant to our nation not its master. It needs to be reminded and corrected, not just accepted.
Re this post, Bowl of Cornflakes. You stay strong as well. It’s no fun is it.
I was fortunate in the sense that out of all the cops I dealt with, one said something that really stayed with me and that I still think about. Rather than saying, “I believe you” the cop said, “I know he (perpetrator) did this” (meaning the abuse).
When he said “I know he did this” it was as though a huge weight was lifted off my shoulders. Rather than being about me, or my word against the perpetrator’s, or what other people believe, it became about the facts and the truth. It is possible to use deductive reasoning to find out the truth and humans use deductive reasoning all the time in many situations. He spoke about the abuse as a fact, not about belief.
@Brian – It is not fun. I would talk more about what I have been through but I am in a civil process at the moment. Lets just say my perpetrator caused 1 dead, 1 nearly dead (drug-user), myself who has been in and out of clinics for suicide/suicidal tendencies/self-harm and 2 more that I don’t know about. There is possibly even more victims that have not come forward. I was 10. The perpetrator was slapped on the wrist, did a small jail time (1 year) because of his age, his immediate admission, and the antiquity of the law of when the offence happened.
To put it in perspective in Australia you get a minimum of ~2 years jail for accidental manslaughter if you kill someone in a car accident and it is deemed to be your fault. Yet someone can purposely rape children that leads to their death or a life-time of suffering and get a slap on the wrist.
The DPP did not bring all offences to court, because they did not want my word against his, they just wanted an easy conviction. The sad fact is currently in Australian law it is all about economics, not truth. Luckily I had witnesses to grooming, which forced him to self admission. The perpetrator was in a position of power in a institution that should be nurturing children not harming them.
You could argue that the system is working for me, but at the very best it is working extremely poorly. I didn’t get to where I am without a hard continuous fight and a lot of knocks. I was born into this world to be as free as everyone else, not to be burdened with this.
Wake up Australia.
It makes me angry and frustrated to read what happened to you, Bowl of Cornflakes. I am glad to hear you are in a civil process. Many of the details you mentioned were the same, including no jail time for the perpetrator.
I’m saddened to read about all the harm that person did to you and the other children. So many dead and nearly dead, people. It is really a type of psychological murder/attempted psychological murder. That would better reflect the type of crime that it is.
I still hear some people thinking abuse has something to do with sex. When I hear people mentioning sex, I realize it is like a criminal stabbing you and then other people saying, “Well he (or she) probably thought you were sick and needed surgery, so they were just confused that you didn’t need stabbing. I’m sure they’re sorry for it now that they know you considered it stabbing when they thought it was surgery.”
Although I don’t know the survivor in the Pell case, or the choirboy who died, i grieve for them. Perhaps once this virus situation has calmed down a bit, next year I will lay some flowers at the High Court in Canberra in memory of the deceased boy and the survivor and hopefully the judges will know that people will never forget. As was mentioned in the KCA podcast with Serkan Ozturk, the High Court judges are saying they are more rational than the jury, even though they didn’t even bother to watch the tapes of the evidence to see the behaviour and reactions of the witnesses in court.
Hang in there with your fight, Cornflakes, there are many people on your side.
Slowly but surely more people are speaking up, survivors are fighting together and together we are making a huge crashing wave of change.
As someone who has Unique Clinical experience in Child sexual Abuse cases by both Men, Fathers, Women and especially Mothers, and who listened to the abysmal Testimony of Pell, that when asked by the Commissioner, when he learnt of child sexual abuse by Risdale, “what did you do?” He said “nothing!” Gasps went up!
Just noticed Monday October 12th 2020, Pell has met with Pope Francis in Rome for the first time since the Australian cardinal’s conviction for child sexual abuse was overturned.
The pair met in a private audience but the Holy See gave no further details.
The Vatican ex-treasurer, 79, was the most senior Catholic figure ever jailed for such crimes but the conviction and six-year term were quashed in April.
Cardinal Pell, who had served a year in jail, said his meeting with the Pope “went very well”.
It is unclear whether he will take another role in the Holy See.