Andrew Bolt: Shame on those who joined George Pell witch hunt
The witch hunt against George Pell destroyed his reputation and locked him in jail for a crime he could not have committed. We must now look at why we let that happen, writes Andrew Bolt.
Andrew Bolt
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Cardinal George Pell is innocent. Shame on all those who persecuted him in one of this nation’s greatest miscarriages of justice.
The High Court judges yesterday spoke with one voice – seven to zero – that Pell should never have been convicted of the improbable rape of two boys in his Cathedral.
But don’t tell me to have faith in our justice system.
Yes, Pell was yesterday free. But this witch hunt ruined his reputation, destroyed his career and robbed him of 404 days of freedom.
So shame on the state institutions who tried so destroy him – a noted conservative and the scapegoat for his church.
Shame on Victoria Police, which trawled for complaints against Pell, even issuing public appeals for “victims”, in a process known to be likely to encourage false memories, false claims and hopes for compensation.
Shame on the ABC, our national broadcaster, for hysterically pushing damaging claims against Pell that all turned out to be too absurd to lead to charges, or too flimsy to go to trial, or, now, too weak to survive an appeal.
Shame on Melbourne University Press for publishing a bestseller on Pell by ABC journalist Louise Milligan which wildly accused Pell of many horrible crimes against children, not one of which has stood up to legal scrutiny, but fed the get-Pell hysteria during his trial.
Shame also on the Victorian Court of Appeal, which in a two-to-one decision rejected Pell’s initial appeal, earning it a stinging criticism from the High Court that the two majority judges “failed to engage” properly with evidence in Pell’s defence.
And shame on the vile mob which still treats Pell as a pedophile. One man I must mention: Dan Andrews, Premier of Victoria, the state whose judges and police did so much to jail Pell.
“I make no comment about today’s High Court decision,” Andrew tweeted.
“But I have a message for every single victim and survivor of child sex abuse: I see you. I hear you. I believe you.”
Which is exactly the attitude that caused this witch hunt – believe any accuser, no matter how overwhelming the evidence exonerating the accused.
Don’t trust the haters who claim Pell just got off on a “technicality”.
The High Court didn’t just say the case against Pell failed to meet the legal test of “beyond reasonable doubt”.
It went further: “There was… a significant possibility that an innocent person has been convicted.”
No wonder. Pell had somehow been found guilty of raping two choir boys at the same time straight after Mass – boys he’d allegedly found in the sacristy at the back of his Cathedral, stealing altar wine.
Never mind that one, now dead, actually told his mother he hadn’t been abused. The whole case rested on the uncorroborated word of the other.
The prosecution admitted the only time these rapes could have happened was in “five or six minutes” of quiet prayer time directly after Mass.
In that time, the choir and altar servers would walk around the cathedral to the back, before the altar servers went on to the sacristy and started to store sacred objects from the Mass. Pell could not be raping boys in that same room then.
But unchallenged witnesses said Pell could not possibly have got to that room in that “quiet time”. He always ended Mass at front of the cathedral after Mass talking to worshippers, usually for 20 minutes, , and strict church practice meant his MC would never leave his side until he went home.
What’s more, the alleged victim was meanwhile walking with the church choir to the back of the cathedral before doubling back, going to sacristy and hunting for the wine. I walked that route: it took more than five minutes of that “quiet time”.
So neither the criminal nor the victim could have been at the scene of the crime.
As the High Court said: “The unchallenged evidence of the opportunity witnesses was inconsistent with the complainant’s account, and described: (i) the applicant’s [Pell’s] practice of greeting congregants on or near the Cathedral steps after Sunday solemn Mass; (ii) the established and historical Catholic church practice that required that the applicant, as an archbishop, always be accompanied when robed in the Cathedral; and (iii) the continuous traffic in and out of the priests’ sacristy for ten to 15 minutes after the conclusion of the procession that ended Sunday solemn Mass.”.
It is a scandal that Pell was jailed on charges so preposterous. Shame on everyone who joined this witch hunt.
READ MORE:
QUESTIONS REMAIN IN CASE AGAINST PELL