No the comments were made to the judge at the plea hearing inside the court in regard to the impending sentencing. The defense lawyer was speaking to the situation that Pell is accused of being if true, a one off random out of character event. If this situation is accurate, Pell is not a serial child abuser. He never groomed the boys or ever saw them again. That makes Pells situation very markedly different to the vast majority of convicted pedophiles.
You would need to make the distinction between a thief and a kleptomaniac. A pedophile (the Latin root of ‘phile’ meaning an innate love, attraction, addiction to a certain type of behaviour) refers to the attraction or propensity to repeat offend. So someone who committed a particular crime once but has no shown propensity to serial offend in that way, is not technically labelled by the 'serial offender label.Bradskii:
In other words, as I said, “convicted of pedophilic acts” = “convicted of being a pedophile”, unless you are suggesting that someone can sexually assault two children without being a pedophile? Would you prefer “convicted child molester”? He certainly has been convicted of molesting children.Rubee:
I will agree to that every day of the week. But he is, as the situation stands, someone who has been found guilty, by a jury of his peers, of raping a child.
I understand that we were neither in the sacristy nor in the courtroom. By those standards few if any people could truly “know” what happened except Pell, the two accusers and God. By those standards few if any people could “know” a lot of things, really. I can’t help but feel that folks wouldn’t be quibbling in this fashion if he were convicted of, say, theft. Would you then be insisting that we couldn’t with a reasonable degree of certitude call him a “convicted thief”?
As I kept catching up the posts, I saw that you had already corrected so apologies.
Those standards are called honesty and humility.
Yes. What is so difficult about being honest about things you know and things you don’t know? When it comes to accusing people of horrible things I don’t know about, my policy is to remember that I don’t know what I don’t know.
Why are you itching to condemn? I have nowhere stated what he did or did not do. I’ve stated you don’t know, none of you does. And every statement you make implying you do is false.
Not at all, at least if what I was taught in psychology class is true. A ‘philia’ is an abnormal attraction (often but not exclusively sexual) - but one can have a ‘philia’ that only expresses itself in fantasy. It does not require concrete behaviour, at all, let alone repeat behaviour. One can be a pedophile by merely fantasizing about sex with children, even if one never acts on those fantasies. And I for one cannot thinkLilyM:
You would need to make the distinction between a thief and a kleptomaniac. A pedophile (the Latin root of ‘phile’ meaning an innate love, attraction, addiction to a certain type of behaviour) refers to the attraction or propensity to repeat offend. So someone who committed a particular crime once but has no shown propensity to serial offend in that way, is not technically labelled by the 'serial offender label.Bradskii:
In other words, as I said, “convicted of pedophilic acts” = “convicted of being a pedophile”, unless you are suggesting that someone can sexually assault two children without being a pedophile? Would you prefer “convicted child molester”? He certainly has been convicted of molesting children.Rubee:
I will agree to that every day of the week. But he is, as the situation stands, someone who has been found guilty, by a jury of his peers, of raping a child.
I understand that we were neither in the sacristy nor in the courtroom. By those standards few if any people could truly “know” what happened except Pell, the two accusers and God. By those standards few if any people could “know” a lot of things, really. I can’t help but feel that folks wouldn’t be quibbling in this fashion if he were convicted of, say, theft. Would you then be insisting that we couldn’t with a reasonable degree of certitude call him a “convicted thief”?
Which of course you have no idea happened in this case.
We all know - with 100% certainty - that he has not only been accused, but found guilty. And the nature of what he has been found guilty of - sexual abuse of children. Which is no more than what I have statedLilyM:
Those standards are called honesty and humility.
Is there some kind of need to be able to hurl stones that is going unmet by maintaining honesty and humility about what one does not know, especially about a person’s alleged crimes? What’s the complaint here exactly?
"But you guys are saying we can’t claim we know what we don’t know; that’s not fair!"
I never hurl stones at people who maintain their innocence just because a jury convicted them. I have enough years on me to know not to treat human juries like God’s judgment seat. Including a bazillion factually proven wrong convictions that destroyed lives.
Yes. What is so difficult about being honest about things you know and things you don’t know? When it comes to accusing people of horrible things I don’t know about, my policy is to remember that I don’t know what I don’t know.
After all, what is so urgent about my hurling my little stones that I can’t do that? Will the world stop spinning if I don’t call someone a thief or a pedophile? Have dictionaries run out of words to describe people and situations so that I have to state things I’ve no business stating?
I know that a jury of 12 have found it proven beyond reasonable doubt. And it is those 12 on the one hand, who afaik had nothing of substance to gain by finding Pell guilty, against Pell himself who had everything to lose.LilyM:
Which of course you have no idea happened in this case.
I am going to take offence on behalf of my fellow Australians at that comment. To suggest that twelve people whom you do not know had nothing in mind except the conviction of an innoncent man to satisfy a sense of revenge and were all on a ‘power trip’ determined to punish the Catholic church is simply outrageous.
The jury for the second cathedral trial were selected from a pool of 250 Victorians summoned to be potential jurors in the case. Out of those 250, 14 were selected to sit on the jury (the case required 14 jurors to allow for a maximum of two to drop out of the jury at any point, and two were randomly selected to be removed before the deliberation stage). One of the main reasons for selecting the jury out of so large a pool was to eliminate any potential jurors who had strong feelings for or against either Cardinal Pell himself or the Catholic Church as an institution. Pell himself also had the right to request that specific jurors be deemed unsuitable. The jury eventually selected represented only 5.6 percent of the total number of people originally considered eligible. I would suggest that this indicates that the court was extremely cautious in ensuring that the jury selected would be as impartial as humanly possible.
No. You launched into a justification for why he should be called a pedophile. If you only stated he was convicted, no one would argue with you. That’s not news. But you want the conviction to mean in addition that we know he’s a pedophile, which we don’t; hence the debate.
There’s no virtue in claiming more knowledge for ourselves than we have. That’s a lack of virtue, in fact - Two of them
And yet, you still don’t know that Cardinal Pell is a pedophile.