[Grem] *****SPAM(5.4)***** Pell bíboros terhelő bizonyíték nélküli elítélése az ausztrál igazságügyi rendszer szégyenfoltja

[Emoke Greschik]

Cardinal Pell’s conviction disgraces the Australian justice system
https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/cardinal-pells-conviction-disgraces-the-australian-justice-system

August 30, 2019 (CatholicCulture.org
<https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/otn.cfm?id=1358>)  *—  The
conviction of **Cardinal George Pe*ll *on sex-abuse charges, despite* *the
complete absence of* *evidence against him*, was a shock
<https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/otn.cfm?id=1316> and *a black
mark against the Australian justice system. The decision by an appeals
court to uphold that verdict
<https://www.catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=43072>
compounds
the problem and the disgrace. **The cardinal will appeal
<https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/cardinal-pell-to-appeal-to-australian-high-court-63353>
to
**Australia's highest court*. *And in that appeal, Australian society will
be on trial.*

*The prosecution of **Cardinal Pell **threatens to become Australia's
version of the Dreyfus Affair, *the disgraceful conviction that troubled
the French political world for more than a decade around the turn of the
20th century. *Captain Albert Dreyfus, accused and twice convicted of
espionage, was a convenient target: unpopular because he was Jewish. **When
evidence emerged showing that he was not** guilty, powerful military
officers concealed** that evidence* *and falsified evidence against **him.**
The French public was howling for a conviction, and the ruling class
decided that it was better to betray **an innocent man* *than **to admit an
injustice.*

*In Australia today, the government — specifically the justice system — is
now also heavily invested in the conviction of* *Cardinal Pell.* To admit
an error would be to admit an unreasonable verdict, brought about by an
unreasonable prosecution, and now buttressed by an unreasonable
appeals-court decision. To say that Cardinal Pell is *not* guilty is to
imply that the judicial system *is* guilty in its treatment of his case.
Will the country's top court have the courage to reach that verdict?

Like Captain Dreyfus, *Cardinal Pell* is an unpopular figure in his own
country. *He **has been vilified by the media, hounded by accusations that
he covered up sexual abuse, *made to appear as the principal cause of the
scandal in Australia. *That characterization** is unjustified.* Although he
was not blameless in his handling of abuse cases — and has admitted as much
— his "Melbourne Response" was the best set of policies at the time; his
reaction to the crisis was considerably better than that of other
Australian prelates. The truth of the matter is that* Cardinal Pell **became
the favorite target of the media because **he was an unapologetically
orthodox (call him "conservative" if you must) Church leader,* *in a
country where* *such courageous Catholic leadership **is a rarity. *He was,
like Dreyfus, a convenient target; ideologues *wanted* him to be guilty.

However, the cardinal's unpopularity is — or rather should be — irrelevant
to the case at hand. The question at issue before the courts is not whether
he was likable, not whether he was sympathetic, not even whether he was
effective in dealing with abusive priests. The question was whether or not
he personally molested two choir boys. And there was — and is — absolutely
no evidence to support that charge, except the word of one accuser.

The appeals court ruled that the jury was not unreasonable to believe the
cardinal's accuser. But as Notre Dame law professor Gerard Bradley points
out
<http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/cardinal-pells-unsuccessful-appeal-and-reason-for-hope>,
the court was obliged to weigh the accuser's testimony against the other
available evidence, and when weighed in that balance, it was indeed
unreasonable to credit the accusation.

Consider:

   - The accuser said that he was one of two choir boys molested by
   then-Archbishop Pell. But the other boy, who is now deceased, denied that
   he had ever been molested.
   - The accuser said that he was molested in the cathedral on two separate
   occasions. But on one of those occasions the cathedral was closed for
   renovations.
   - The accuser said that he and his alleged comrade had left the
   procession of choristers, but no one noticed that they were missing and
   choir directors said that it was highly unlikely anyone could slip away
   unnoticed.
   - The accuser said that he was in the sacristy sipping sacramental wine,
   but the wine was locked away. He said the wine was red. It was not.
   - The accuser said that the archbishop came upon him alone in the
   sacristy. But multiple witnesses said that the archbishop was never alone
   in the cathedral sacristy: a room in which the door was always open, a room
   buzzing with priests and acolytes and other archdiocesan functionaries.
   - The accuser said that the archbishop parted his vestments to expose
   himself. But an archbishop's vestments do not allow that action.

Unless there had been a video camera running constantly in the cathedral
sacristy, what more could the Pell defense team have done to defend the
cardinal against this charge?

Consider, too, that the accuser said nothing about this alleged crime for
years. He came forward in June 2015 — two years after police began hunting
for evidence of wrongdoing by Cardinal Pell. And his story of the alleged
incident in the sacristy was suspiciously similar to a story that had been
published in *Rolling Stone*
<https://www.catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=41317> nearly
four years earlier. Keith Windschuttle of Australia's *Quadrant* magazine
remarked that "the two accounts are so close to being identical that the
likelihood of the Australian version being original is most implausible."

Justice Mark Weinberg, the appeals court jurist who voted in favor of the
cardinal's appeal (in a 2-1 decision), made the obvious point that the
accuser's credibility was questionable at best. He remarked that "the
complainant's account of the second incident seems to me to take brazenness
to new heights, the like of which I have not seen."

Against this single shaky witness, the court heard more than twenty
witnesses who testified not simply that the archbishop did not molest the
boy, but that it was *literally impossible* for him to have committed the
crime as described.

The appeals court seems to have fastened on that concept — the notion that
the crime was impossible — and found it wanting. It's true; it is
*possible* that
Cardinal Pell committed this crime — in the same sense that it is
*possible* I'll
be hit by lightning this morning, although at the moment I don't see a
cloud in the sky. Nearly anything is *possible*. But is it *plausible*?
Does it satisfy the standard — in Australia as in the US — that a defendant
must be found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt? Not even close.

So how is it that the Australian courts found the accuser's evidence
compelling? The only possible explanation, I think — apart from the evident
eagerness to convict an unpopular figure — is the growing tendency to
believe that anyone who brings an accusation of sexual abuse *must* be
believed, regardless of the specific circumstances. And haven't we seen
that tendency at work in our own American courts — especially in the court
of public opinion?

In the vast majority of sex-abuse cases — especially those involving
incidents from the distant past — there is no hard physical evidence, and
the only witnesses are the accuser and the accused. A "credible accusation"
is not a legal conviction. How many innocent priests have been suspended
from ministry on the basis of a single "credible accusation," which they
cannot disprove? After years of winking away reports of abuse, have we
swung so far in the opposite direction that we now demand convictions
without evidence? Angry Americans want to see abusers punished, and rightly
so. But beware of empty accusations and convenient victims.

*Published with permission from **CatholicCulture.org
<https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/otn.cfm?id=1358>**.*
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