Cardinal Pell Acquitted

[Small L]

NPR (will update)

CNN (More detailed)

Link to the Judgment

[brucejoel99]

Incredibly disappointing. One can only imagine what his victims are feeling right now.

[PSOL]

What a farce of justice. Anyone defending the Catholic Church or the law systems across the globe that give an easy pass to those aligned with the elite are purely aiding the continuation of this abuse in this day and age.

[Kingpoleon]

If there is reasonable doubt as to his guilt, he should not be found guilty and imprisoned.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

My understanding is that there was a lot of prosecutorial misconduct during his trial(s), separate from the question of whether or not he did it?

Not that that excuses an appeals court telling a jury that it "ought to have" found reasonable doubt. wtf. What's the point of even having trial by jury if a bunch of old judges can make a determination like that for a powerful defendant?

[RI]

I have no idea if he did what he is accused of, but his trial was a sham with extremely flimsy evidence which did not merit his conviction.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Incredibly disappointing. One can only imagine what his victims are feeling right now.

This.

The obvious solution if the earlier trial was mishandled would have been to void it and hold a new one. I understand that the prosecutorial team has apparently f**ked up multiple times already, but that's no excuse not to have him answer for his crimes.

[brucejoel99]

Incredibly disappointing. One can only imagine what his victims are feeling right now.

This.

The obvious solution if the earlier trial was mishandled would have been to void it and hold a new one. I understand that the prosecutorial team has apparently f**ked up multiple times already, but that's no excuse not to have him answer for his crimes.

Worth noting that, in their judgement of the case, they never deemed Pell to be fully innocent nor did they dismiss the victim's evidence as not credible, which makes it even more confusing as to why they didn't come to the conclusion of a retrial over quashing it completely. The narrative will be that he's innocent, but as far as the documentation of their decision goes, it's a cloud that still hangs over him.

Or perhaps there just wasn't any legal value in a retrial? For, barring any new evidence, it seems a retrial could only reestablish - at worst for Pell; at best for those that want him jailed - the complainant as plausible & the "opportunity" evidence as having no weight.

[TJ in Oregon]

Incredibly disappointing. One can only imagine what his victims are feeling right now.

This.

The obvious solution if the earlier trial was mishandled would have been to void it and hold a new one. I understand that the prosecutorial team has apparently f**ked up multiple times already, but that's no excuse not to have him answer for his crimes.

Worth noting that, in their judgement of the case, they never deemed Pell to be fully innocent nor did they dismiss the victim's evidence as not credible, which makes it even more confusing as to why they didn't come to the conclusion of a retrial over quashing it completely. The narrative will be that he's innocent, but as far as the documentation of their decision goes, it's a cloud that still hangs over him.

Or perhaps there just wasn't any legal value in a retrial? For, barring any new evidence, it seems a retrial could only reestablish - at worst for Pell; at best for those that want him jailed - the complainant as plausible & the "opportunity" evidence as having no weight.

From everything I've read it looks like it's basically the alleged victim's word against Pell's without much else in the way of evidence. I don't know enough about the Australian legal system to say for sure, but it seems like it's bound to be a not guilty result since there's not much proof either way.

[brucejoel99]

Incredibly disappointing. One can only imagine what his victims are feeling right now.

This.

The obvious solution if the earlier trial was mishandled would have been to void it and hold a new one. I understand that the prosecutorial team has apparently f**ked up multiple times already, but that's no excuse not to have him answer for his crimes.

Worth noting that, in their judgement of the case, they never deemed Pell to be fully innocent nor did they dismiss the victim's evidence as not credible, which makes it even more confusing as to why they didn't come to the conclusion of a retrial over quashing it completely. The narrative will be that he's innocent, but as far as the documentation of their decision goes, it's a cloud that still hangs over him.

Or perhaps there just wasn't any legal value in a retrial? For, barring any new evidence, it seems a retrial could only reestablish - at worst for Pell; at best for those that want him jailed - the complainant as plausible & the "opportunity" evidence as having no weight.

From everything I've read it looks like it's basically the alleged victim's word against Pell's without much else in the way of evidence. I don't know enough about the Australian legal system to say for sure, but it seems like it's bound to be a not guilty result since there's not much proof either way.

Well, there was indeed evidence other than the witness testimony, such as Pell's itinerary, etc., but it evidently wasn't enough in the eyes of the High Court to secure (or, rather, uphold) a conviction beyond a reasonable doubt.

[John Dule]

This must be the first time a priest has been thankful that people have reasonable doubts.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

This must be the first time a priest has been thankful that people have reasonable doubts.

...okay, I chuckled.

[afleitch]

Ugh.

Don't read Catholic Twitter.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Don't read Catholic Twitter.

Always good advice regardless of what's going on in the news.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

One thing that's worth meditating on in this context is the extent to which abuse accusations have, almost as a matter of course, become political footballs within the Church. You determine whether a prelate is "liberal" or "conservative" and form your opinion from there. I myself--and I say this by way of a very strong self-criticism--have at various points "wanted" Pell to be guilty because I already thought he was an evil son of a bitch for unrelated, fundamentally political reasons. Conversely, there are a lot of thinkpieces coming out of the EWTN/CNA/Register orbit treating him as if he's been shown to be a living saint, rather than just somebody who happens to have had a dodgy criminal conviction overturned; some of these thinkpieces come from people who immediately sided with Archbishop Viganò in 2018. Whatever our thoughts on any of these people, I think we can all agree that this is a deeply dismaying cultural and psychic process that's unfolding.

[afleitch]

One thing that's worth meditating on in this context is the extent to which abuse accusations have, almost as a matter of course, become political footballs within the Church. You determine whether a prelate is "liberal" or "conservative" and form your opinion from there. I myself--and I say this by way of a very strong self-criticism--have at various points "wanted" Pell to be guilty because I already thought he was an evil son of a bitch for unrelated, fundamentally political reasons. Conversely, there are a lot of thinkpieces coming out of the EWTN/CNA/Register orbit treating him as if he's been shown to be a living saint, rather than just somebody who happens to have had a dodgy criminal conviction overturned; some of these thinkpieces come from people who immediately sided with Archbishop Viganò in 2018. Whatever our thoughts on any of these people, I think we can all agree that this is a deeply dismaying cultural and psychic process that's unfolding.

It's worth remembering that Pell's own lawyer effectively downplayed the severity of the acts during his trial rather than dismiss them as fabrications. And in Scotland Alex Salmond was found not guilty of 11 (and not proven in 1) counts against him by the jury despite it being alleged his own lawyer was not convinced of his innocence.

Sex abuse cases are being politicised by not just people but by institutions. And this is a really effective tactic because as a subset of offences they are really really difficult to prove evidentially in criminal courts. Which then feeds back into the belief that they are being 'fabricated' or the victims are liars. Being a child but having an adult recollection unfortunately hobbles a lot of cases. Pell's accusers are apparently pursuing it in the civil court. From my own previous experience in my line of work we could provide compensation through the civil route often when cases failed, or could not proceed to trial.

[afleitch]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-52569092

'Cardinal George Pell knew of child sexual abuse by priests in Australia as early as the 1970s but failed to take action, a landmark inquiry found.

The findings on Cardinal Pell - an ex-Vatican treasurer - come from Australia's royal commission into child sexual abuse, which ended in 2017.

Details were only revealed on Thursday. A court had previously redacted the report because the cleric was facing child abuse charges at the time.

The cardinal has denied the findings.'

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-52569092

'Cardinal George Pell knew of child sexual abuse by priests in Australia as early as the 1970s but failed to take action, a landmark inquiry found.

The findings on Cardinal Pell - an ex-Vatican treasurer - come from Australia's royal commission into child sexual abuse, which ended in 2017.

Details were only revealed on Thursday. A court had previously redacted the report because the cleric was facing child abuse charges at the time.

The cardinal has denied the findings.'

CNA's coverage of this is something to behold. They're spinning it so that the rap falls on the current Archbishop of Melbourne, Peter Comensoli, likely because--as an acquaintance of mine remarked on Facebook--Comensoli, unlike Pell, is honest (or stupid) enough to admit he's made mistakes. Despite the fact that Comensoli has been in office for less than two years.

This whole Pell saga (even independent of the question of whether he should have been convicted of child rape or not) is such a regression to the "ABUSE CRISIS IS AN ANTI-CATHOLIC WITCH HUNT, MUH LAST ACCEPTABLE BIGOTRY" Bill Donohue days of the 2000s and early 2010s, before the brief period in which "liberal" figures like McCarrick and Wuerl being implicated gave that faction within the Church reason to temporarily pretend to care about victims.