Andrew Bolt: What’s happened to the principle of innocent until proven guilty?

When the golden rule – innocent until proven guilty - is trashed, any of us can be destroyed just by one pointed finger. What justice is that?

We’re in danger. What’s happened to the principle that saves us from the lynch mob: that we are innocent until proven guilty?

The latest example of this witch-huntery is an extraordinary statement from the Left-leaning Marque Lawyers, blasting the AFL’s independent inquiry into claims the Hawthorn club was brutal to three Aboriginal players.

Marque Lawyers on Wednesday said the woman making the most explosive claims against then coach Alistair Clarkson and head of the football operations Chris Fagan – that her partner was told to make her have an abortion – would not speak to the inquiry because she did not feel “safe”.

It added: “The investigation [will] interrogate whether the incidents of abuse even took place, which is a huge insult to the many First Nations players and family members who were brave enough to come forward to share and relive the trauma they experienced.”

Former Hawthorn coaches Alastair Clarkson and Chris Fagan have denied all allegations.

What insolence. I’m astonished that a law firm – even in Premier Daniel Andrews’ sinister state – would complain that the AFL’s independent inquiry will check the truth of claims which both Clarkson and Fagan reject as false.

It’s bad enough that Clarkson and Fagan were vilified as racists in a report to Hawthorn by an Aboriginal consultancy which interviewed the players and their partners, all anonymous, but did not give the two coaches any chance to respond.

It’s worse that many in the media immediately treated Clarkson and Fagan as guilty, despite a lack of any corroborating evidence, forcing both to stand aside for months as coaches of North Melbourne and Brisbane respectively.

All that was unjust. But now Marque Lawyers demands the AFL’s independent inquiry into these untested and disputed claims also treat them as true, before we’ve heard the two coaches tell their side of the story.

Are Clarkson and Fagan to be hanged without a trial?

You cannot get a clearer example of the new tyranny: that we must treat allegations by certain “victims” as fact. Forget proof. Forget the denials of the accused or the presumption of innocence.

When I say certain victims, I mean those who suit the Left’s ideological campaigns: people claiming to be a victim of racism, for instance, or rape or Catholic priests.

In those cases, even lawyers and police now lose their heads, especially in Victoria.

Here are just some examples of the presumption of innocence – and the right of the accused to a fair trial – being trashed.

Convictions against George Pell were overturned.

● IN 2009, a Victorian Labor state minister, Theo Theophanous, lost his job over rape claims so preposterous they were thrown out at the committal hearing. The lead detective took at least 15 drafts to knock the disturbed accuser’s statement into shape, removing obvious inconsistencies such as false dates, later telling the court: “It’s incumbent on us to believe what complainants tell us.”

IN 2015, Victoria police advertised for “victims” of pedophilia at Cardinal George Pell’s former cathedral in the years he was there to come forward – before any complaints, let alone proof of “victims”.

● IN 2017, police charged Pell with 26 counts of child sex offences against nine “victims” – even though every charge was so weak or even ludicrous that they’ve been withdrawn, dismissed or rejected by the High Court as inherently improbable.

● IN 2017, barristers in Melbourne’s prestigious Owen Dixon Chambers gave a prize to ABC journalist Louise Milligan for her book falsely accusing Pell of raping two boys in his cathedral, even though Pell was awaiting trial on that very allegation.

● THIS year, former Liberal staffer Bruce Lehrmann was charged with allegedly raping then colleague Brittany Higgins in Parliament House, which he denies. But the trial was delayed when Channel 10 journalist Lisa Wilkinson won a Logie for interviewing Higgins and gave a speech suggesting she was telling the truth.

An upset Brittany Higgins outside a Canberra Court. Picture: Gary Ramage

● BEFORE that trial, Higgins was the featured speaker at a Justice for Women rally at Parliament House, and at a National Press Club event alongside Grace Tame, a victim of a pedophile. Both times she was treated as the victim of a crime.

● ON OCTOBER 21, while an ACT Supreme Court jury considered its verdict in the resumed Higgins case, the ACT’s Women Lawyers Association named as its lawyer of the year the ACT Victims of Crime Commissioner, Heidi Yates, who’d accompanied Higgins to court every day of the case in a public display of support.

There is something malignant in the air. When that golden rule – innocent until proven guilty - is trashed, any of us can be destroyed just by one pointed finger. What justice is that?