The trials of Cardinal George Pell are perhaps the most consequential in Australian legal, media and social spheres in decades. But their lessons will almost certainly be ignored.
The legal system, especially in Victoria, will engage in assiduous arse-covering. Victorian Police Minister, the unflushable Labor hack Lisa Neville, has already started. A great many of the public will utterly refuse to change their minds, having pre-judged (the literal definition of “prejudice”) the case long ago. The media will merely go sniffing for the next quarry in their endless pack-hunts.
The fact is that no defendant in modern Australia has been subjected to such a media pile-on as Pell. The attack included journalists, commentators and entertainers who were, in fact, Pell antagonists. The list includes (in alphabetical order) Richard Ackland, Paul Bongiorno, Barrie Cassidy, Richard Carleton, Peter FitzSimons, Ray Hadley, Derryn Hinch, David Marr, Louise Milligan, Tim Minchin, Lucie Morris-Marr, Jack Waterford and more besides.
The ABC led the campaign in programs such as 7.30, Four Corners, Lateline (as it then was), Q&A, News Breakfast and Radio National Breakfast.
There was also Nine’s 60 Minutes, Ten’s The Project, and Nine Entertainment newspapers The Age, and The Sydney Morning Herald, plus Guardian Australia, The New Daily and The Saturday Paper.
Gerard Henderson compares Pell’s case to media witch-hunts past, including Colin Campbell Ross, wrongly hanged for the rape and murder of 12-year-old Alma Tirtschke in 1921, and, as many have done, to the Chamberlain case 60 years later.
And then there’s the Pell case[…]
[T]here is a responsibility on the media to behave professionally while providing information to the public.
This did not happen with respect to Pell. In fact, Melbourne University Press brought forward the planned publication of ABC journalist Milligan’s book Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of George Pell to before his trial first began in June 2017.
Milligan led the “Get Pell” cause when, in July 2016, 7.30 devoted an entire program to the issue. Today, the ABC is standing by Milligan and Milligan is standing by her book.
This despite the fact it essentially accuses Pell of two sets of offences that have never been established.
If, as is rumoured, Pell pursues libel action, Milligan can expect to be front and centre. Time and again, she has published all manner of accusations against Pell which have collapsed in court and under scrutiny. Even in the run-up to what legal experts (correctly) predicted would be an acquittal by the High Court, Milligan ran a last-ditch hatchet job. Some of which raise serious questions about unethical conduct. One accuser’s accusations appear to strongly contradict his own statements from just five years ago. Previously, one of Milligan’s “witnesses” withdrew his accusations, claiming that he was “in the middle of a complete meltdown” involving “drink, drugs” at the time.
Pell’s trial has drawn condemnation from observers across the political spectrum. It’s rare indeed to find Gerard Henderson and human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson in agreement. Robertson attacks what he sees as an undermining of fundamental legal principle.
I had a sense of foreboding […because] the trial itself — indeed two trials, because the first jury could not agree — had been held in utter secrecy, unreported because of a suppression order.
I couldn’t quite believe that news of the most significant criminal prosecution in the country had been suppressed at the time it happened and for months afterwards. Secret trials happen only in nasty dictatorships[…]
What is even more extraordinary is that, even after Cardinal Pell’s acquittal, his accuser’s identity remains secret. This is no doubt done under the rubric of supposedly protecting child complainants, but “Witness J” is not a child. He is a middle-aged man. Yet, he has been allowed to make what would appear to be false accusations, entirely protected from public scrutiny.
From police trawling operations to secret trials to media witch-hunts, the persecution of Cardinal Pell ought to shake the foundations of all of them. Ought to.
Unfortunately, they’ll almost certainly carry on as they always have.
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