NewsBite

George Pell witch-hunters: I don’t believe you

The day Cardinal George Pell was acquitted was the day the Fabians forgot the right to fair trial and went feral.

The MockerThe Mocker
@Oz_Mocker
6 min read
10:43AMApril 16, 2020.
Updated 4:17PMApril 16, 2020
Print
Cardinal George Pell is exclusively interviewed by Andrew Bolt on Sky News following the quashing of child sex charges. CREDIT: Sky News
Cardinal George Pell is exclusively interviewed by Andrew Bolt on Sky News following the quashing of child sex charges. CREDIT: Sky News

Despite his “I make no comment about the High Court’s decision” disclaimer, Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews last week gave Australia’s highest judicial body the virtual middle finger after the full bench unanimously quashed all five child sex offence convictions against Cardinal George Pell. In a message ostensibly directed to all victims of child abuse, Andrews tweeted “I believe you”.

Never mind Pell had spent almost four years fighting 26 criminal charges, all of which were either discontinued or found to be unsustainable. Never mind an elderly man had been unjustly convicted, not to mention wrongly imprisoned for over a year. Never mind his reputation has been destroyed or that he is financially ruined.

Never mind Pell’s right to a fair trial was compromised by a series of a damaging leaks from sources close to the police task force long before charges were laid. Never mind Victoria’s Office of Public Prosecutions proceeded to trial despite there being no reasonable prospect of conviction. Never mind the OPP continued the prosecution despite the first trial resulting in a hung jury.

Never mind Andrews has ultimate responsibility for the competence and integrity of Victoria’s criminal justice system, or that his government has serious questions to answer following this debacle. Andrews shamelessly resorted to shutting down criticism by demanding everyone believe all complainants in cases of child sexual abuse. It is a demagogue’s false dichotomy: you either support victims of this insidious crime or you don’t.

The corollary of Andrews’ message is that anyone accused of such crimes who denies wrongdoing must be disbelieved. That is an appalling disregard and contempt for the presumption of innocence.

Both police minister Lisa Neville and Attorney-General Jill Hennessy, whether it be a case of spinelessness or obtuseness, retweeted Andrews’ divisive message.

But this “I believe you” philosophy is a new thing for the Andrews Government. No such mantra existed when whistleblower and party member Jake Finnigan alerted the public to Labor’s rorting of electoral allowances in the 2014 election campaign. State Ombudsman Deborah Glass found that $387,842 had been misused for campaigning purposes. The Andrews Government spent $1 million in legal fees, all taxpayer-funded, in its unsuccessful attempt to shut down the Ombudsman’s inquiry. Finnigan was demonised, and his personal information, as well as that of his family, was leaked to the media.

Pell, you may recall, fronted up for a police interview. All 16 serving Labor MPs named in the red shirts scandal, including government ministers, refused to do so. Following the criminal investigation, Victoria Police referred a brief of evidence to the OPP. In October 2019 police advised that no charges would be laid against any person.

In response to criticism that the government had not co-operated in the investigation, Andrews simply observed “The (Office of Public Prosecutions) and Victoria Police are independent of government,” and that he had “nothing further to add.” That was as far as it went. Yes, just seven months ago Andrews was an ardent believer in respecting the process and the presumption of innocence, at least when it was in his government’s interest to do so.

As for the Pell acquittal, it was a day when the Fabians went feral. “The High Court has found there was not enough evidence to convict,” tweeted ABC host Barrie Cassidy. “It did not find him innocent.” That is an appraisal worthy of a bush lawyer. When an accused is found not guilty, the presumption of innocence remains.

Last year, following Pell’s second trial and the finding of guilt, journalist and Guardian columnist Richard Cooke condemned the “monstrous hypocrisies” of those who continued to maintain his innocence. “Pell’s defenders have not decided on his guiltlessness after a careful review of the evidence,” he wrote. “It seems they did not – and this is damning – even take the time or have any inclination to read unsuppressed media reports before weighing in.” Literally seconds after the High Court handed down its 7-0 decision last week he tweeted “Breaking news: paedophilia is now legal in the state of Victoria”. For various reasons, we can safely assume Cooke did not carefully review the 36-page judgment before weighing in.

“The scales of justice are being re-calibrated,” wrote former ABC radio host Jonathan Faine following Pell’s acquittal. “It has never before been the role of an Appeal Court to substitute their view for the jurors. Now it is.” This is tripe. As Pauline Wright, president of the Law Council of Australia stated: “Nothing in the Pell case has overturned or diminished the crucial and primary responsibility of juries, not judges, to determine whether an accused person is guilty of an offence.”

Turning now from the bush lawyer to the bandana kind, we must give a special mention to Sydney Morning Herald columnist Peter FitzSimons. In June 2017, following the announcement that Pell was facing criminal charges, he asked rhetorically via Twitter if the cardinal would step down “until such times [sic] as he proves [his] innocence”.

In fairness to FitzSimons, he was only 56 years old when he tweeted this, and clearly no-one had explained to the noted author, journalist, Member of the Order of Australia and former fellow of the Senate of the University of Sydney that the prosecution, not the accused, bears the onus of proof.

When Pell was found guilty, FitzSimons held this was “emphatically so” and an “undeniable fact”. He derided those who questioned the verdict, saying these “print Perry Masons” were “a series of commentators and conservative figures – mostly those who agitated that he never be put on trial in the first place”.

Yet the critics included those outside conservative circles. What is more, they are people who actually understand how the burden of proof works. The Age’s veteran crime reporter, John Silvester, wrote in February last year “Pell was found guilty beyond reasonable doubt on the uncorroborated evidence of one witness, without forensic evidence, a pattern of behaviour or a confession.” And as Andrew Clark of the Fin Review noted last year, some former members of the judiciary had expressed misgivings about the quality of the evidence.

Despite these fatal deficiencies in the prosecution’s case, current and former members of the ABC have suggested Pell’s acquittal lacks moral and legal legitimacy. “No one in Australia has ever spent so much money trying to undo the sworn evidence of a single witness,” wrote Faine last week. “Now, with Pell’s case, we can all see what can happen when you do have the money, the backing to chase every possible angle.” Retweeting this article approvingly, ABC Sydney presenter Wendy Harmer added “As always … Follow The Money”.

Then there were those who argued any questioning of the jury verdict was akin to anarchy. “There is still a chance, however small, that [Pell] might yet beat the charges in the High Court, but it’s not much of a chance, and whichever way that final appeal goes, there is one outcome you can bet on with confidence,” wrote Brisbane Times columnist John Birmingham last August. “Pell’s defenders will do immense damage to the institution of the courts and the justice system as a whole in the prosecution of their culture war.”

If anything, exposing the prosecution’s deficiencies in what later was revealed to be a miscarriage of justice is ultimately a good thing for the judicial and justice system. And the High Court has come out of this with its reputation enhanced. But as for the suggestion Pell’s defenders had no interest in justice but were fighting a “culture war”, consider this excerpt. Writing for literary journal Meanjin – which is edited by ABC presenter Jonathan Green – Crikey correspondent Guy Rundle wrote last year of his euphoria at seeing Pell sentenced:

“George Pell was not being convicted or sentenced for the sins of the Church, Justice Kidd had noted. Not in the court, but out here, in the public square, it was impossible not to feel the full weight of history come down, Da Vinci Code lines bouncing inside my head. This was the descendant of the Borgias, of Julius II, of the Apostles really, convicted in a county court as far from Rome as it is possible to be on this planet, and sent to that distinctive modern torment, protective confinement in the grey walls and functional fittings of a solitary cell. Not as a Defender of the Faith, but as a paedo, a nonce, a rock spider. This was an event so epochal, so momentous, it seemed impossible to feel its import, its momentousness, in this no-space, a building that refused all glory, evoked nothing.”

That is the perspective of a spectator in the Colosseum as opposed to a courtroom. So much for the insistence by the left that conservatives are responsible for the culture war. No doubt they will deny they are fighting the battle they accuse others of, just as ABC editorial director Craig McMurtrie denied last week the national broadcaster’s reporting in the Pell affair was a “witch-hunt”. To them I say just one thing.

I do not believe you.

More Coverage

ABC’s groupthink on Pell a sin against journalism
Greg Sheridan
Criticism of Pell judges ‘disgraceful’
Chris Merritt
Pell injustice shows why we need to restore fairness to the law
Janet Albrechtsen
Police ‘advertised’ for abuse cases: Pell
TESSA AKERMAN, STEVE JACKSON
Read related topics:Cardinal PellDaniel AndrewsVictoria Politics
More related stories

Original URL: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/george-pell-witchhunters-i-dont-believe-you/news-story/8e973b69243134174f69e3131399ddba