LAUNCH OF CARDINAL GEORGE PELL, THE MEDIA PILE-ON & COLLECTIVE GUILT

On Tuesday 7 December, barrister and senior counsel Margaret Cunneen SC launched Gerard Henderson’s Cardinal Pell, The Media Pile-on and Collective Guilt which, Margaret Cunneen’s words, “is a meticulous chronology which draws together all the stakeholders, as they would call themselves, in the attempted destruction of Cardinal George Pell. As Gerard illustrates so eloquently, they believed what they wanted to believe.” Margaret Cunneen was introduced by Dr Michael Casey of the PM Glynn Institute and Professor Zlatko Skrbis, Vice-Chancellor of Australian Catholic University, welcomed guests and acknowledged Cardinal Pell’s long association with ACU.  The introductory comments are reproduced at the end of Margaret Cunneen’s paper.

LAUNCH OF CARDINAL GEORGE PELL, THE MEDIA PILE-ON & COLLECTIVE GUILT

GERARD HENDERSON 

Many thanks to all of you for coming to the Australian Catholic University today for the launch of Cardinal Pell, The Media Pile-on & Collective Guilt. I am very grateful Vice Chancellor Zlatko Skirbis for hosting this event and to the ACU staff, led by Damien Freeman, Michael Casey and Alicia Moore who helped to organise it. Along with the Sydney Institute staff – Anne Henderson, Lalita Mathias, Paige Hally (who designed the excellent cover) and Naomi Killin. They are mentioned in the Acknowledgements. Anthony Cappello and the team at Connor Court in Brisbane did a great job in getting the book out before Christmas – especially in view of the distribution problems caused by the pandemic.

John Howard, who wrote a fine foreword to the book, has a commitment at the Australian National Archives in Canberra today and could not be here. He told me that he was most disappointed at not being able to attend – and said he is a huge fan of Margaret Cunneen.

It’s great the Australia’s second longing serving prime minister – after Robert Menzies – took time to read the entire manuscript and write such a considered and courageous foreword.  As you know, Mr Howard is not a Catholic. His comments on the Pell Case – before and after the unanimous decision of the High Court of Australia – demonstrate his commitment to justice, however unfashionable a cause might be. And it was, and remains, unfashionable to defend Cardinal Pell in some circles.

Like John Howard, I am an admirer of Margaret Cunneen SC who has experienced a grievous denial of natural justice with respect to her treatment by the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC). Like Cardinal Pell, Ms Cunneen had to go the High Court to have her name cleared.  But she has not received an apology from ICAC for the reputational damage she has suffered.  Likewise Cardinal Pell has not received an apology from Victoria Police and various legal institutions in Victoria for his wrongful conviction and jailing.

In a perceptive review of my book in his “Media” column in The Australian  on 29 November, that newspaper’s former editor-in-chief Chris Mitchell reflected that the Pell Case was essentially about justice. I understand that this is also the view of T.K. Tobin QC. As it was with Fr Frank Brennan SJ – who disagrees with Cardinal Pell on aspects of theology but was one of Pell’s most consistent defenders. Frank Brennan’s work was most helpful in writing this book. Both are thanked in the Acknowledgements.

Professor Greg Craven, the former vice-chancellor of the ACU, held a similar position.  As did Katrina Lee, who accompanied Cardinal Pell during his hearings before the Royal Commission into Institutional Reponses to Child Sexual Abuse and his various legal appearances.  She also helped by proving material for the book.

Others who publicly doubted Pell’s conviction included Monica Doumit, James Franklin, Anne Henderson, Paul Kelly, Warren Mundine, Lyle Shelton and Keith Windschuttle – who are here today. I should also mention my friend, the late Fr Paul Stenhouse MSC – along with Andrew Bolt, Jeff Kennett and Amanda Vanstone. Just under half of this group were not born Catholic. A slightly larger list is cited in the book.

I was born, educated and worked for some years in Melbourne. So it comes with no pleasure to reflect on the injustices that the Victorian-born George Pell suffered in the Victorian legal system before the matter got out of Victoria and into the High Court of Australia.

A few Victorians did express concern that Pell could have been charged, prosecuted and found guilty beyond reasonable doubt – with the jury decision upheld by a majority judgement in the Victorian Court of Appeal – on charges that lacked substantive evidence, beyond the contradictory allegations of one complainant. And in spite of some 20 witnesses whose evidence was consistent with Cardinal Pell’s innocence

Most notably, Justice Mark Weinberg QC in his devastating 200 page minority judgment in the Victorian Court of Appeal – perhaps the most important dissenting judgment in the history of Australian criminal law.  However, overwhelmingly, Victoria’s Police, legal and media institutions (including The Age and a number of Melbourne based ABC journalists, the Melbourne office of The Guardian Australia and The New Daily) were against Pell.  A few examples illustrate the point.

• Victoria Police set up what was termed Operation Tethering to investigate then Archbishop Pell before a single complaint had been made against him. It took a full year before one complainant came forward and this came to nothing. After Cardinal Pell’s conviction was quashed by the High Court’s seven-zip decision, the then Victorian Police Commissioner Graham Ashton denied on Radio 3AW that Cardinal Pell had been investigated before a single complaint had been made. This statement was false – but has not been retracted
• Originally the Office of Public Prosecutions declined to take the case against Pell. So, he was charged by Victoria Police. But the OPP appeared for the prosecution before the Magistrates’ Court. During the committal proceedings, Magistrate Belinda Wallington declared that, in accordance with Victorian law, all criminal matters proceed to trial unless the credibility of a witness is effectively destroyed or where the evidence is so weak that the prospect of conviction is minimal.

• Magistrate Wallington threw out Victoria Police’s charge that Pell had raped a boy, who cried out, during a film in a crowded Ballarat cinema. This says a lot about Victoria Police. This charge should never have been laid. But the Magistrate allowed one charge to go to trial despite the fact that Victoria Police in the Magistrates’ Court admitted that it had not investigated the allegation. This was the fifth of five convictions which the High Court quashed.
• On several occasions the Victorian Director of Public Prosecutions rejected applications by the defence that the charges should not be proceeded with – including after the jury in the first trial could not come to a decision. Yet the prosecutor at the trial and re-trial could not explain, for example, where the adult altar servers, who are always close to an archbishop during a Solemn Mass, were at the time of the alleged offences – they were just “disappeared”. So was the master of ceremonies, Monsignor Charles Portelli, who was physically close to the Archbishop throughout the Solemn Mass

• It is widely acknowledged – even by such Pell antagonists as The Guardian’s David Marr – that the Crown performed woefully before the Victorian Court of Appeal. And it is a matter of record that Kerri Judd QC, the Victorian Director of Public Prosecutions, could not explain before the High Court how the alleged crimes could have happened. Another dismal failure.
• Melbourne-based ABC journalist Louise Milligan led the media pile-on against Pell with the ABC TV 7.30 report on 27 July 2016 which occupied the entire 30-minute program. Milligan focused on allegations against Pell concerning offences alleged to have occurred in public in the Eureka Pool at Ballarat in the 1970s. In time, these charges were dropped by the DPP and did not proceed to trial. 7.30 also focused briefly on the alleged crimes, also in a public place, at St Patrick’s Cathedral in Melbourne in the mid-1990s – the convictions were quashed by the High Court.

As documented in the book, Ms Milligan refused to answer questions about the journalism in Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of George Pell and only appeared in soft one-to-one interviews on the ABC or panels with one or more mates at literary festivals. She never engaged with a defender of George Pell and/or a critic of her book. A clear case of intellectual cowardice.

• Martin Foley, a minister in Daniel Andrews’ Victorian Labor government, launched Louise Milligan’s book on 17 May 2017. At this time it was widely known that Victoria Police was investigating Pell – since this information had been leaked, by a person or persons unknown, to journalist Lucie Morris-Marr, a Pell antagonist, in February 2016. In view of this, Mr Foley’s association with Louise Milligan and her book Cardinal was improper and unprofessional.
• Immediately after the decision of the High Court in Pell v The Queen was delivered, Victorian Labor Premier Daniel Andrews put out his statement:

I make no comment about today’s High Court decision.  But I have a message for every singe victim and survivor of child sexual abuse: I see you, I hear you, I believe you.

Another improper and unprofessional intervention by a senior Victorian politician in the criminal law jurisdiction.  Until a criminal case is concluded – a complainant is just that, a complainant.  Once a conviction is finalised – he or she becomes a victim. This is fundamental to criminal law.  If Premier Andrews believes that every complainant is a victim – then the State of Victoria may as well abolish trials and proceed direct to sentencing once charges have been laid by Victoria Police or the OPP.

I am not aware of any other present or past Australian political leader who has deliberately cast doubt, in public, on a unanimous High Court judgment in a high profile criminal law case.

• The Pell Case revealed deep problems within the Victorian system of justice involving Victoria Police, the Office of Public Prosecutions, the Director of Public Prosecutions, the Magistrates’ Court, the Victorian Court of Appeal (specifically the Chief Justice of Victoria and the President of the Victorian Court of Appeal) along with the Victorian government itself. Yet, close to two years since the High Court’s historic decision, none of these matters has been addressed. It is as if the governance of Victoria is in denial about the comprehensive failure of the Pell prosecution.

  It is as if the governance of Victoria is in denial about the comprehensive failure of the Pell prosecution.

• Margaret Cunneen is an innocent victim of ICAC – which has powers similar to a royal commission. And Cardinal Pell has suffered reputational damage following the findings of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse which were released shortly after the High Court decision.

This book demonstrates that the Royal Commission’s findings concerning Pell’s alleged knowledge of offending by the notorious pedophile Gerald Ridsdale, when Pell was relatively young priest in Ballarat, are contradictory. Moreover, the findings were made in spite of a lack of evidence – on the assumption that it was, variously, “inconceivable”, “implausible”, “not tenable” and “unlikely” that Pell would not have known about Ridsdale, a kind of reverse onus of proof. Such words were weaponised to cover the fact that the Royal Commission’s findings with respect to Cardinal Pell were not supported by evidence.

Moreover, despite spending 19 hours in the Royal Commission’s witness box about his time in Ballarat and Melbourne, the Royal Commission made one finding about Pell without putting its case to him for his response. A lack of due process. As you know, there is no appeal against a Royal Commission’s finding or findings.

• And then there is the media – led by Pell antagonists Louise Milligan (ABC), David Marr (The Guardian Australia), Lucie Morris-Marr (The New Daily) and Melissa Davey (The Guardian Australia). Essentially, they accepted all allegations against Pell without proper checking and believed what they wanted to believe. They were cheered on by their colleagues – and some won media awards for books that are deeply flawed.

• The ABC was the main offender. Such was the hostility to Pell within the taxpayer funded public broadcaster that not one ABC journalist expressed the view that Pell was not guilty beyond reasonable doubt. We know that Noel Debien held this view – and we also know that he felt so intimidated by the anti-Pell culture at the taxpayer funded public broadcaster that he could not say so, even off-air and in private.

  Another message of the Pell case – which is highly relevant today – turns on the question of whether a fair trial is possible at a time of media pile-on such as the one Pell experienced.

• Another message of the Pell case – which is highly relevant today – turns on the question of whether a fair trial is possible at a time of media pile-on such as the one Pell experienced. Especially when there is the view that someone is somehow responsible for the crimes of others, the concept of collective guilt.
• This is a book about Cardinal Pell – but also about justice in the age of social media which has facilitated what Judge Peter Kidd – when sentencing Pell – condemned as the lynch-mob mentality. The trial and conviction of Cardinal Pell was an injustice not only to the convicted man but also to the real victims of pedophilia.

* * * * *

The Pell case is but one of a number of cases involving Victoria Police, the Victorian legal system and the Victorian political system as it relates to the law that warrant an independent inquiry – preferably undertaken by someone outside the State of Victoria. But don’t expect any action soon.

Once again, thanks to those who are here today, including Barry Humphries – it’s a role reversal, since I am used to being in the audience at many a Humphries performance. And, thanks to those who supported me in writing the book – many of whom are named in the Acknowledgements.