The ABC should know better, given Louise Milligan for years pushed ludicrous claims about George Pell

Cardinal George Pell is again the victim of farcical reporting of a farcical legal process.

Cardinal George Pell has been the subject of misleading reporting on the ABC. Picture: AAP

The ABC has done it again, squealing that Cardinal George Pell sexually abused two boys in the 1970s.

Or as its persecutor-in-chief Louise Milligan gleefully – and misleadingly – put it on Friday: “Two men have been granted compensation by the federal government’s National Redress Scheme for abuse by the late Cardinal George Pell.”

And off Milligan went, gloating over “the rapist George Pell”.

So is this the proof at last that Milligan was right all along? That Pell was indeed the monster she’d described in Cardinal, which the journalists’ union named its 2007 “book of the year”?

As if. Spoiler alert: Pell, who died two years ago, is again the victim of farcical reporting of a farcical legal process.

Louise Milligan is the ABC’s persecutor-in-chief. Picture: AAP

Milligan wrote the book Cardinal: The rise and fall of George Pell.

The ABC should know better, given Milligan for years pushed ludicrous claims that Pell had raped two boys at once in the open sacristy straight after Mass at Melbourne’s St Patrick’s Cathedral, when neither Pell nor his lone accuser could have been at the scene of the crime at the only time it could have been committed.

The High Court eventually ruled seven judges to nil that Pell be cleared.

This time there are two claims against Pell. One is that as a young priest he grabbed the genitalia of a boy, “David”, as he tossed children in a Ballarat pool, as he often did.

This claim originally formed one of the 26 charges of abuse Victoria Police laid against Pell in 2017 – all of which failed. Police dropped this one as hopeless.

The High Court eventually ruled seven judges to nil that Pell be cleared. Picture: Getty

But the National Redress Scheme has now ordered the Catholic Church to pay David $45,000 for this alleged abuse by Pell plus more by a Christian Brother, despite the decision-maker admitting David’s memories were “sketchy”.

“James” claimed he was about nine years old at Ballarat’s St Francis Xavier Primary School when Pell was coaching the school’s football team.

James said he stole Pell’s cardigan and ran into the school’s empty gym. Pell chased him, put him on a small trampoline and anally raped him so savagely that he bled.

I can’t say for sure it didn’t happen, but it seems inherently improbable.

How could Pell be sure that none of the other boys would run after him, excited to see their coach chase the thief?

How could he be sure none would see him raping James, or that James wouldn’t go crying to staff or family? Who’d risk jail like that?

And raped on a small trampoline? By a coach you’d imagine was more angry than aroused?

In fact, James said he was too ashamed to tell his mother for 50 years, until money was being paid to people saying they were victims.

He’s now got $95,000.

This is a serious allegation, and should have been tested seriously, too, before a man – even if now dead – was damned forever as a child rapist.

But this National Redress Scheme operates bizarrely, in a Kafkaesque dark.

We’re not told which official decided this case. Not even Ballarat Bishop Paul Bird knows who this Independent Decision Maker is.

Bird tells me he wasn’t even asked for a defence to the accusations, which he does not believe. Even more incredibly, he says there was no hearing. How can a rape claim be decided like that? One reason is that the standard of ‘proof’ for this compensation is incredibly low – not ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ but just ‘reasonably likely’.

Another might be the extraordinary way this scheme is run.

The Department of Home Affairs appoints Independent Decision Makers who don’t even need legal training. As it says: “IDMs are professionals, who have experience and qualifications in sectors including, but not limited to, social welfare, case management, policy, psychology, Indigenous affairs, and/or legal.” They can just be public servants.

Nor need they have deep knowledge of legal concepts such as ‘evidence’ and ‘proof’. They instead “must have a strong understanding of the cultural, social, historical, and political factors relevant to the scheme”.

“Political”? They must also have “high emotional intelligence”, and “use procedural fairness” to assess claims “in accordance with the scheme’s trauma informed framework”.

I’d guess a government “trauma informed” scheme wouldn’t like to doubt a claim that a Catholic priest – much vilified by the ABC – abused a weeping boy. But it’s good enough for Milligan and the ABC to finally dance on Pell’s grave.

Originally published as The ABC should know better, given Louise Milligan for years pushed ludicrous claims about George Pell