Pell verdict reveals the ugly truth about this country

Are we seriously at the point now where it's become acceptable to defend child sexual abuse?

FOUND GUILTY: Cardinal George Pell. Picture: DAVID CROSLING

OPINION:

WHAT'S happened to this country?

It's a question I find myself asking more and more.

In the past week I've seen a Federal Minister brazenly make false statements about refugees jumping medical queues, in a desperate bid to incite fear and hope it wins an election.

I've also seen a bunch of commentators completely abandon their questionable moral compasses and become fully-fledged child sexual abuse apologists.

Surely, no matter what your beliefs, political or ideological, you can't be so crass, so arrogant, as to disregard the experiences of victims, experiences backed up by a guilty verdict reached by 12 people, and try to influence the judicial process?

In the past week, a former Prime Minister, who led this country for a large part of my youth, wrote a letter praising the character of a man just found guilty of five counts of child sexual abuse.

One count of sexual penetration of a child under the age of 16 and four counts of committing an indecent act with, or in the presence of, a child.

That was the rap sheet and Cardinal George Pell was found guilty of the charges.

John Howard wrote the character reference after the verdict was reached.

I know thousands of words have been written about this already.

But I'm still scratching my head about it all. What happened to us?

Systemic child sexual abuse has clearly been an issue sects of Australia, unsurprisingly, largely religious, have struggled with.

But in the common ground, where most of us exist, the idea that someone in a position of such power as a Catholic Archbishop, now Cardinal, could use that status to force kids to perform oral sex on him inside a cathedral, it pissed people off.

We got angry about that. Really angry.

So when did that change?

On what planet has child abuse ever been defensible? When did we stop trying to protect the vulnerable?

And still these hardcore conservative commentators, the likes of Bolt, Devine, Kenny and more, sprung to Pell's defence.

Why?

Of course there's an appeal to play out. But as it stands, right now, Pell has been found guilty by a jury of his peers and the only people who were privy to all the evidence were those intimately involved in the case.

Not the sycophants using their amplified voices for an institution which has shown time and again it has little disregard for right or wrong.

Pell's own barrister described the offending as "no more than a plain vanilla sexual penetration case”.

But still the commentariat worked overtime to start running defence for their man Pell.

Why?

I understand people have beliefs, faith, and at the moment, a seemingly desperate grip on bloody-minded political persuasion so they can sit on their ledge and cast labels on anyone displaying freedom of thought, but surely our vision's not become this blurred?

Originally published as Pell verdict reveals the ugly truth about this country