REMEMBERING GEORGE PELL – GERARD HENDERSON

Cardinal George Pell died in Rome on 10 January 2023. After years of fighting the charges laid by Victoria Police, and subsequently found guilty by a Victorian court, George Pell had those charges overturned by a unanimous verdict of the High Court of Australia. Frank Brennan SJ AO, in an address to The Sydney Institute on 24 January, launched a new updated edition of Gerard Henderson’s exhaustive study of the campaign against Pell – George Pell, The Media Pile-on & Collective Guilt. Frank Brennan gave an exhaustive summary of the flawed nature of the campaign against Cardinal Pell over years and concurred with Gerard Henderson that the media had played a significant role in Pell’s unjustified condemnation. Gerard Henderson in his reply to Brennan drew attention likewise to the flawed nature Peter McLellan KC’s Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse which especially targeted Christian (primarily Catholic and Anglican) schools and George Pell, while not investigating even one government school where, subsequently, it has been found a large number of cases of abuse were committed.

REMEMBERING GEORGE PELL

GERARD HENDERSON

Many thanks to Jacquelynne, The Sydney Institute’s chair – for her introductions to this event. Thanks to Fr Frank Brennan SJ for another terrific performance tonight. He’s not only a brilliant lawyer and a great communicator, but he has a heck of a lot of courage – because to do what Frank did with respect to defending Cardinal George Pell against the allegations that he was a pedophile, was not easy. Thanks, also, to Katrina Lee, who, like Frank, gave me a lot of information when writing the first edition of this book. Katrina couldn’t be here tonight because she’s interstate. Anne Henderson, of course, advising on the text and doing research for me. Lalita Mathias who typed the manuscript and advised on the text. Paige Hally, who advised on the text and did the cover and photographs. Naomi Killin, who helped a lot with the research. John Howard, who launched the first edition.

The Honourable Michael Kirby AC CMG is here tonight. Michael Kirby and I have an odd relationship, because we disagree on much but get on quite well. In a recent email exchange on another matter, Michael Kirby commented: “Martin Luther” – who started the Protestant Reformation – “was right on so many issues including marriage (though, not for gays who went straight to hell). Luther was an anti-Semite. No one’s perfect.”

It took me some time but, after some consideration, I thought I should reply to this go at me about Luther. So, I said: “As to the Protestant Reformation and all that – in my advanced years, I appreciate Thomas Cranmer, but not Luther.” Thomas Cranmer was the first Protestant Archbishop of Canterbury after the Protestants took over Canterbury Cathedral at the time of the Protestant Reformation in England. It’s only 500 years ago, but some of us still can’t get over it. Whereupon the good Protestant Michael replied to the not so good Catholic Gerard: “You only prefer Cranmer because he was burnt at the stake” by the Catholics.

Many thanks to Frank for launching this and to Michael Kirby for his endorsement, which, for good reason, has caused a lot of interest. The former High Court judge regards Pell’s conviction as a miscarriage of justice and hopes it contributes to efforts to establish a Criminal Cases Review Commission in Australia.

I want to make a few brief points tonight. After the Cardinal’s death a year ago, his critics in the media pile-on and elsewhere turned to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. Because they couldn’t really argue against the High Court’s 7-zip decision – for the reasons Frank points out in his excellent book, Observations on the Pell Proceedings – and he has added to today. So, the Pell-antagonists went to the Royal Commission because it had made hostile findings against George Pell. But what they failed to acknowledge is that, in relation to Cardinal Pell, the Royal Commission’s findings were replete with inconsistencies and errors.

This continued after George Pell’s death. The Royal Commission’s Chairman, Peter McLellan KC, wrote a foreword to a book by Chrissie Foster, which was co-authored, or assisted, by Paul Kennedy of the ABC. He was one of the prominent members of the Pell pile-on. In the forward to the book Still Standing (Viking, 2023), Peter McLellan wrote: “Cardinal George Pell … gave evidence to the Royal Commission to the effect that the [Catholic] Church did not understand that the rape of a child was a crime, seeing it as a ‘moral failing’”. Michael Rowland repeated McClellan’s claim on the influential ABC TV News Breakfast program on 4 May 2023.

As I document in my book – what happened was that George Pell not only gave written evidence to the Royal Commission where he said that clerical pedophilia was a crime – he not only wrote it in his official statement to the Royal Commission – but he made the point in oral hearings when Peter McLellan KC was presiding as chair of the Royal Commission. The date was 24 February 2014. To verbal the dead like that is very unprofessional – and grossly unfair since the accused has no defence.

Louise Milligan, the leader of the Pell-antagonists in the media, was one of the many to join in the pile-on after Pell’s death in relation to what the Royal Commission had found, despite its flaws. Others included Lucie Morris-Marr, Derryn Hinch, Paul Kennedy, Ray Hadley, Barney Zwartz, David Marr, Suzanne Smith, Magda Szubanski, Mike Carlton and others.

Writing in The Saturday Paper on 14 January 2023, Milligan accepted uncritically the Royal Commission’s findings re Pell and went to one other case where she said that Pell had not been tried and should have been. Professor Jeremy Gans, a well-known academic at Melbourne University, and a highly respected lawyer in the area of criminal law, tweeted this on 14 January 2023: “It’s a recurrent problem with Milligan’s journalism. If there are facts that don’t help her argument, she doesn’t tell her readers. She just leaves them out”.

That’s a very serious criticism of the ABC’s main reporter on the Pell Case over many years. That, if Milligan doesn’t like the facts, she just leaves the facts out. Matt Collins KC, on 7 July 2022, provided a comment to the ABC TV Media Watch program, which is presented by Paul Barry, about royal commissions. It was about a matter of defamation, but this doesn’t really matter. It’s the same point which a lot of journalists, including Louise Milligan, do not understand.

Matt Collins KC wrote: “Royal commissions make factual findings in a particular context, involving the exercise of executive, as opposed to judicial power… However distinguished a royal commission may be, experience has shown that clear or conclusive findings that one makes are often not vindicated in subsequent judicial proceedings whether criminal or civil.”

As it turned out, the McClellan Royal Commission had no facts against Pell – no forensic or witness evidence. It used words such as it’s “untenable” that something didn’t happen, it’s “inconceivable” that this didn’t happen. But such words are used when you don’t have facts. What’s tenable, if something is untenable? What’s conceivable, if something is inconceivable? Such questions cannot be answered.

I’ve gone through the report of the Royal Commission, and I have come to the conclusion that it was a massive failure in one particular area.  Despite having a budget of $372 million and 300 staff at any one time, Peter McLellan KC and the Royal Commission examined no government schools – although he implied that he did in an article in The Australian on 9 September 2023. Sure, McClellan did look at three NSW government schools in three pages out of about 200 pages of one case study. But only with reference to the sexual abuse of students by other students. That was all. The Royal Commission did not examine pedophilia in any government school throughout the whole of Australia.  Despite sitting for five years and winding up in December 2017 after a two year extension.

Since the Royal Commission report at the end of 2017, there have been two boards of inquiry into child sexual abuse in Tasmanian government schools, which have led to very serious findings. There is currently a massive problem in Victoria. Starting in Beaumaris Primary School with three teachers and extending to 23 other schools where those three teachers taught. One former Victorian state school teacher emailed me and said he went to the Royal Commission to speak about what happened in his school in rural Victoria.  The retired teacher was interviewed and received a pro-forma “thank you” from Peter McClellan. But the Royal Commission never looked at that school. Kathleen Foley SC is conducting the inquiry in Victoria looking into these 23 schools. It is due to report by the end of February.  It is estimated that pedophilia was a reality in around one hundred additional schools run by the Victorian Department of Education.

Former Labor Premier Daniel Andrews promised, early last year, to apologise to those whom he described as victim-survivors of child sexual abuse in government schools in Victoria. But he resigned before doing so. The current Premier, Jacinta Allan, is going to make an apology in 2024, I understand. But the surface has barely been scratched on this issue.

In fairness to the Labor government, Ted Baillieu, when he was the Coalition Premier of Victoria, set up a parliamentary inquiry which was specifically into child sexual abuse in institutions other than government institutions. Its full title was Betrayal of Trust: Inquiry into the Handling of Child Abuse by Religious and Other Non-government Organisations.

The Royal Commission focused predominantly on institutional responses to pedophilia in the Catholic schools – but also some Anglican schools and some other Christian schools. It didn’t do a case study on one government school in the whole of Australia. There’s also a police inquiry now in NSW – in the Northern Beaches area of Sydney, following the Christopher Dawson case. Dawson was convicted of the murder of his wife and carnal knowledge of a student at the government school in which he taught.

My final conversation with George Pell, which I mention at the end of the book, occurred when we addressed a small conference of priests at Kenthurst in north-west Sydney in July 2022.  He spoke first, I was second and Monica Doumit addressed the conference after lunch.

I received a question concerning what I thought about the whole case. Pell was in the audience. When I am asked a question, I usually give a direct answer. So, I said, I wouldn’t have wanted to have done 405 days in what was essentially solitary confinement. But added that it was best that it happened this way – because if Cardinal Pell hadn’t got a full clearance in the High Court, in a unanimous decision, he would have had no chance of getting rid of these allegations. You needed a very definitive finding on the case, and that’s what the High Court delivered with respect to his five convictions. All the other charges were withdrawn either by the police or the prosecution or thrown out by the Magistrates’ Court or County Court.

It so happened I was seated next to the Cardinal at lunch.  I said to him, because I didn’t know how he was going to react, words to this effect: “George, I hope you weren’t upset by what I said about your imprisonment, but I was asked a question and I gave a direct answer”. He responded: “No, Gerard, I’ve been thinking exactly that sort of thing myself in recent times. I understand the point. Also, if I hadn’t spent over a year in jail, I never would have written my Prison Journal” – of which he was very proud.

That’s the last substantial conversation I had with him. I think Cardinal Pell’s three volume Prison Journal is a remarkable work – which will stand the test of time. He was glad he wrote it – and I’m glad he did so as well.

Once again, thanks to Frank Brennan for the work he did on the Pell Case and, in particular, for an important – and at times amusing – speech tonight.