Sun Daily - After Cardinal Pell verdict, Australian journalists may face jail (extracts):
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George Pell once Australia's Top Cardinal and also Vatican Treasurer |
SYDNEY: Dozens of Australian reporters and editors may face jail sentences for their coverage of Vatican Treasurer George Pell’s child sex abuse trial after being issued with legal notices asking why they should not be charged with contempt of court.
Pell was found guilty in 2018 of abusing two boys, but a court suppression order prohibited media from reporting about the trial at the time to ensure Pell a fair second trial on further abuse charges. Those additional charges were dropped on Tuesday, allowing the suppression order to be lifted and media reports of the trial to be published.
Pell was found guilty in 2018 of abusing two boys, but a court suppression order prohibited media from reporting about the trial at the time to ensure Pell a fair second trial on further abuse charges. Those additional charges were dropped on Tuesday, allowing the suppression order to be lifted and media reports of the trial to be published.
The suppression order had applied throughout Australia “and on any website or other electronic or broadcast format accessible within Australia”.
However, when Pell was found guilty on Dec 11, some Australian media ran headlines, including one that said “CENSORED”, and articles referring to a trial where an unnamed high-profile person was convicted of a serious crime that could not be reported.
County Court of Victoria Chief Judge Peter Kidd, who oversaw the Pell trial, made his displeasure with media coverage clear two days after the verdict, calling a hearing with state prosecutors and Pell’s defence team.
“My thinking at the minute... that given how potentially egregious and flagrant these breaches are, a number of very important people in the media are facing, if found guilty, the prospect of imprisonment and indeed substantial imprisonment,“ Kidd said. The lifting of the suppression order means his comments can now be made public.
The maximum penalties for contempt of court in Victoria state are five years jail and a fine of more than A$96,000 (US$69,000), while a company can face a fine of nearly A$500,000.
However, when Pell was found guilty on Dec 11, some Australian media ran headlines, including one that said “CENSORED”, and articles referring to a trial where an unnamed high-profile person was convicted of a serious crime that could not be reported.
County Court of Victoria Chief Judge Peter Kidd, who oversaw the Pell trial, made his displeasure with media coverage clear two days after the verdict, calling a hearing with state prosecutors and Pell’s defence team.
“My thinking at the minute... that given how potentially egregious and flagrant these breaches are, a number of very important people in the media are facing, if found guilty, the prospect of imprisonment and indeed substantial imprisonment,“ Kidd said. The lifting of the suppression order means his comments can now be made public.
The maximum penalties for contempt of court in Victoria state are five years jail and a fine of more than A$96,000 (US$69,000), while a company can face a fine of nearly A$500,000.
Victoria’s The Age newspaper on Tuesday said that the state’s Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) had issued 32 show cause notices to its journalists and other mastheads owned by parent Nine Entertainment Co asking them to explain why they should not be charged.
It won't wipe out all incidents of pedophilia but it's time the Catholic church allow priests to marry. Then the wives (besides the Holy Spirit) can keep an eye out for any misbehavior.
ReplyDeletepaedophiles lust after lil' boys (and girls)
DeleteThey all should come to Malaysia esp to Kelantan, Trengganu, Pahang, Perlis, Kedah, embrace Islam and their sexual sins will be forgiven all in the name of religion.
ReplyDeleteWhy talk about others when Malaysians are themselves dickheads and assholes.
https://youtu.be/ACRIuAqoFQM
DeleteEnjoy... Nostradamus. Wakakaka!
Reading through whatever is available in newspaper reports recounting the two incidents when Pell was found guilty of sexually assaulting choir boys, ie at the sacristy and church corridor after busy Sunday Mass, at a large Cathedral mind you, not just a church, the short time available and the risk of being caught by someone, it raises doubt in my mind. The jury must have more facts than what has been reported, otherwise in my mind the evidence does not prove guilt “beyond reasonable doubt”.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if the public are so sickened by the Catholic clergy and is punishing Pell, making him pay for the sins (ala Christ the Redeemer) of the really guilty priests from all over the world who have gotten away scott free. His appeal is justified.
https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/the-case-for-and-against-what-the-jury-was-told-in-george-pell-s-trial-20190226-p510f6.html
I am not defending Pell but there is a worry amongst some that justice may have been swayed.
ReplyDeleteQUOTE
Beyond reasonable doubt:
Was Pell convicted without fear and favour?
By John Silvester
February 27, 2019
George Pell is a polarising figure, which is perhaps why there are now two warring camps – those who want him to be guilty of historical sex offences against two choirboys and those who don’t.
Many, including Pell (although he denies it), may be guilty of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice by moving and hiding paedophile priests and concealing evidence that could convict them. But that is not what he was charged with. He went to trial on allegations that he assaulted two boys in St Patrick’s Cathedral in 1996.
He denied the allegations, with the jury believing the testimony of one of the boys that he was molested in the crowded church.
Pell was also convicted in relation to the second boy, although that alleged victim had previously denied ever being molested, did not make a complaint and was not interviewed by police or examined in court (he died in 2014).
Which means Pell was found guilty beyond reasonable doubt on the uncorroborated evidence of one witness, without forensic evidence, a pattern of behaviour or a confession.
It is a matter of public record that it is rare to run a case on the word of one witness, let alone gain a conviction.
In recent years there has been a shift in the investigation and prosecution of sex crimes. For years victims have been denied justice because not enough resources were thrown at cases that were not black and white.
Now police are told to come from a mindset of believing a person who says they have been sexually assaulted and more cases in the grey area are being presented to juries. In reality, sex crimes are being treated differently to other crimes, although the standard of proof remains the same.
"May you rot in hell," yells a man in the scrum as Cardinal George Pell arrives at court for a pre-sentencing hearing. In the case of the high-profile Pell, there must have been pressure to deal with him differently. With the police's history of covering up for the church here was a chance to present a case, weak or strong, in the open before a jury.
Court cases should not be run to clear the air and they are run not on what happened but what can be proven. It is all about admissible evidence. The accused does not have to prove their innocence to the jury but the prosecution must prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt. A juror is faced with three conclusions; (1) the offender did it; (2) the offender didn't do it; or (3) I don't know. Conclusions 2 or 3 result in an acquittal.
Pell has become a lightning rod in the worldwide storm of anger at a systemic cover-up of priestly abuses. But that doesn't make him a child molester.
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 abuser into silence. Most of the successful historical prosecutions come when police find multiple individual victims who testify about similar facts.
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.
He could not have known if one of them would walk straight out and blow the whistle on him, and with two kids in the room he would have been sunk. This is not the action of a cunning paedophile but of a random, opportunistic criminal who usually turns out to be a serial offender.
Yet no one has alleged Pell had a history of this type of crime.
UNQUOTE