George Pell: the persecution of an innocent man

[Motherwit]

### On 10 December, The Catholic Weekly is joining with The Mustard Seed Bookshop to launch a remarkable book: Keith Windschuttle’s searing indictment of the lynch mob-driven sham which led an innocent man to be convicted of the vilest crimes. What went wrong – and how? The Persecution of George Pell is a damning indictment of how the most fundamental principles of Australian democracy, criminal justice and truth in journalism were chucked out the window of Australian life.

Writer, historian and publisher, Keith Windschuttle has released an account of the prosecution, trial and ultimate acquittal by the unanimous decision of the High Court of Australia of churchman, Cardinal George Pell. The book will be launched in Sydney by The Mustard Seed Bookshop on 10 December.

Windschuttle’s latest book The Persecution of George Pell (Quadrant Books, Sydney, October 2020) is arguably his most important for the highly readable examination it makes of personalities and processes unknown to many but potentially significant for Australian institutions including the police, criminal justice system, media, public service and politics.

Windschuttle presents this work as the story of how the highest levels of the police, judiciary and politics in Australia plus lobby groups, compensation lawyers and journalists for major news media, found common cause to persecute, convict and jail an innocent man. The innocent man is George Pell, Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne (1996-2001), Catholic Archbishop of Sydney (2001-2014), made Cardinal by Pope St John Paul II in 2003 and later again appointed by Pope Francis in 2014 to examine financial records in the Vatican and identify and correct irregularities.

The cover photograph of Windschuttle’s book is memorable: it is of Cardinal Pell in handcuffs on his way to attend a hearing in the Victorian Court of Appeal on 5 June 2019 against his conviction by decision of a second jury on 11 December 2018. On that day Cardinal Pell was just short of 78 years, turning 78 on 8 June 2019 in poor health and scarcely a threat to Victoria Police or the Victorian public.

It is not clear what agency of the State of Victoria decreed that this elderly and infirm prisoner should appear in public in handcuffs or why, but it provided a useful photo opportunity for alert watching media. This was, in Windschuttle’s view, the second of two seemingly gratuitous acts which appeared designed to maximise the humiliation of the Cardinal.

 

[Motherwit]

A little earlier, on 13 March 2019, the Trial Judge elected to telecast his sentencing of Cardinal Pell, broadcast nationally for one hour and eight minutes, despite what Windschuttle asserts were protests by Cardinal Pell’s defence counsel (p. 11) and the knowledge that Pell intended to appeal his conviction. Cardinal Pell was also required to sign the Victorian Register of Sex Offenders for the maximum term of “life”, rather than the lesser periods of eight or 15 years available to the court.

He was, as already noted, just short of 78 years when that decision was made.

The marked and in many respects implausible evidentiary deficiencies in the case on which Cardinal Pell was convicted were identified by the dissenting member of the Court of Appeal, Justice Mark Weinberg, acknowledged as one of Australia’s leading experts in criminal law, and by the seven members of the Full High Court in unanimously acquitting Cardinal Pell on 7 April 2020.

Windschuttle records those deficiencies in the evidence given and in the reasons for judgment of the trial Judge at pages 252 – 257. Both Justice Weinberg’s powerful analysis in dissent and the unanimous decision of the Full High Court appear to have carried conviction with many legal practitioners particularly jurists and those practising in criminal law, as being obviously correct.

George Pell: the persecution of an innocent man | The Catholic Weekly

I pray that actual people are eventually named and shamed for what happened to the Cardinal.