PELL CASE: MORE DOUBTERS COME FORWARD

John Silvester: "If Pell did molest those two teenagers... it certainly does not fit the usual pattern of paedophile priests." And: "Criminal lawyers... said they were "astonished" at Pell's conviction.. Victorian Bar president Matt Collins said it was highly unusual for a conviction to be made on behalf of a victim who had never reported abuse." 

Doubt grows. Significantly, it grows in The Age, a newspaper which has been a chief  accuser of Cardinal George Pell. 

 

John Silvester:

If Pell did molest those two teenagers in the busy cathedral, it certainly does not fit the usual pattern of paedophile priests.

Those in power identify vulnerable potential victims, groom and then isolate them, committing offences in private then pressuring the abused into silence...

In the Pell case, although he had access to hundreds of boys over his career he did not groom the vulnerable. Instead he attacked two he did not know in broad daylight in a near public area.

He could not have known if one of them was not the son of the chief commissioner, the premier or the chief justice who were waiting outside to collect them.

And:

Several criminal lawyers who spoke to The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald on the condition of anonymity said they were "astonished" at Pell's conviction given the apparent lack of grooming, the short window available for Pell to abuse the boys, and the robes he was wearing, which had no splits or openings....

While one of the victims gave evidence about his abuse, the other man died several years ago from an accidental heroin overdose. He never reported the abuse and, the court heard, denied anything had happened to him as a young choirboy when he was asked by his mother...

Victorian Bar president Matt Collins said it was highly unusual for a conviction to be made on behalf of a victim who had never reported abuse...

Famed church historian George Weigel sums up the case for doubt brilliantly, with his timetable of improbabilities.

From my column today:

Is it really possible that Pell slipped away from his own processional after Mass, unseen by the priest meant to attend him everywhere, and forced himself on two choir boys he found in the normally busy sacristy, despite knowing the door was open and anyone could come in at any second?

Is it possible he did this when one of the boys, now dead, said he hadn’t actually been abused, and the other struggled to explain how Pell exposed himself when he was in fact dressed in a heavy, belted archbishop’s alb that reached to his feet?

Could this attack have happened when not a single witness corroborated a single one of the accuser’s claims?

I've mentioned these before:

Frank Brennan on the conviction of George Pell for sexual abuse: 

Anyone familiar with the conduct of a solemn cathedral mass with full choir would find it most unlikely that a bishop would, without grave reason, leave a recessional procession and retreat to the sacristy unaccompanied.

Witnesses familiar with liturgical vestments were called. They gave compelling evidence it was impossible to produce an erect penis through a seamless alb. An alb is a long robe, worn under a heavier chasuble. It is secured and set in place by a cincture, which is like a tightly drawn belt. An alb cannot be unbuttoned or unzipped, the only openings being small slits on the side to allow access to trouser pockets.

The complainant’s initial claim to police was that Pell had parted his vestments, but an alb cannot be parted; it is like a seamless dress.

Later, the complainant said Pell moved the vestments to the side. An alb secured with a cincture cannot be moved to the side. The police never inspected the vestments during their investigations, nor did the prosecution show that the vestments could be parted or moved to the side as the complainant had alleged. The proposition that the offences charged were committed immediately after mass by a fully robed archbishop in the sacristy with an open door and in full view from the corridor seemed incredible to my mind.

I was very surprised by the verdict. In fact, I was devastated. My only conclusion is the jury must have disregarded many of the criticisms so tellingly made by Richter of the complainant’s evidence and that, despite the complainant being confused about all manner of things, the jury must nevertheless have thought — as the recent royal commission discussed — that children who are sexually violated do not always remember ­details of time, place, dress and posture....

Should the appeal fail, I hope and pray Pell, heading for prison, is not the unwitting victim of a ­nation in search of a scapegoat. Should the appeal succeed, the Victoria Police should review the adequacy of the investigation of these serious criminal charges.."

Greg Craven:

Speaking as a lawyer, I know we have few appealing qualities. But we do believe in our own justice system.

All my life, I have joined in the chorus that our justice system is the best in the world. With the case of Cardinal George Pell, I am not singing quite so loud.

What the last year has shown is that the justice system can be systematically assaulted from the outside in a conscious attempt to make a fair trial impossible. This should terrify every citizen, because every citizen is a potential defendant.

Miranda Devine:

It’s devastating because I don’t believe that Pell, who I know slightly and admire greatly, could be guilty of sexually assaulting two choirboys in a busy cathedral after Sunday mass when he was Archbishop of Melbourne in 1996...

How hard it must have been to find 12 impartial souls after the campaign of vilification against Pell over the past two decades and the carefully orchestrated drip feed of lurid allegations by Victoria police to selected media against the backdrop of shocking revelations of child sexual abuse by clergy around the world...

Anyone who knows how crowded and open is the sacristy at St Patrick’s Cathedral after Sunday mass must know the accusations are implausible. “Only a madman would attempt to rape boys in the sacristy immediately after mass,” said Pell’s legal team.

It is the word of one man, codenamed AA, against the word of Cardinal Pell.

There are no witnesses and evidence was given that the second alleged victim, who died long ago, told his mother that he had not been sexually abused while a chorister.

In all the responses I've had to my original column, some of them extraordinarily abusive,  not a single one has addressed the central arguments - that the alleged attack was so logistically improbable as to make a conviction "beyond reasonable doubt" hard to accept.

The reponses have instead been:

You defend pedophiles. (No.)

You should accept the verdict of a jury. (But verdicts are often appealed. And remember Lindy Chamberlain, at long last acquitted after conviction and failed appeals. We are free, and should be, to think some verdicts are not fair.)

Pell did other bad things/the Church is rotten/we need to send a signal/we must listen to the victims/etc etc. {All that may or may not be true, but  is irrelevant to the central question: did Pell abuse these two boys as alleged.)

UPDATE

Peter Wales:

The verdict is not an indictment of George Pell and the Catholic Church. It is an indictment of the media.

More details, more improbabilities:

Other witnesses pointed out that on both of the occasions on which Archbishop Pell celebrated Mass between August and December 1996, choir practice was held immediately after Mass, and that the absence of two choirboys would have been noted immediately. Other witnesses gave evidence that the accuser’s description of finding and drinking altar wine in a back room was unlikely in the extreme, given that altar wine was kept in a vault and only brought out in required quantities before Mass.

Michael Giffin, a priest in the Anglican Diocese of Sydney:

A bishop wearing cope over an alb, tied in with a cincture, over a cassock, cannot sexually abuse anyone. This is surreal.