Posted on 08/24/2019 8:49:34 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
By 2-to-1 vote, an Australian appellate court this week dismissed George Cardinal Pell’s appeal of his conviction on five counts of “historic” child sexual abuse. For Pell’s supporters, the decision can hardly be surprising. Given the way things had gone, a just outcome would have come as a shock.
Prosecutors accused Pell of surprising two choirboys who were guzzling communion wine in the sacristy of the Melbourne cathedral immediately after Mass one Sunday in 1996. The cardinal was charged with forcing the boys to fellate him while he was still vested in archbishop’s robes.
The allegations were utterly implausible — for several reasons well-established by the defense at trial.
The cathedral’s communion wine was kept locked in a safe, for starters, and Pell couldn’t have left the post-Mass proceedings without his absence being noticed; witnesses attested this never happened. Likewise, the choirboys couldn’t have left the post-Mass proceedings without their absence being noticed; witnesses attested this never happened, either.
Plus, the sacristy would have been bustling with activity. As witnesses testified, Pell was never alone in the cathedral while vested for Mass but always accompanied by at least one assistant. The security arrangements and layout of the cathedral, and the respective locations of the cardinal and the choir, would have made it impossible for the abuse to occur as alleged. Nor is it physically possible to expose one’s genitals while vested in an archbishop’s robes.
Before he died in 2014, one of the two boys denied that he had “ever been interfered with or touched up” — by anyone. All this led 10 out of 12 jurors at Pell’s first trial to vote to acquit. Yet at the retrial, the jurors ignored the enormous weight of exculpatory evidence and voted in December to convict him amid a climate of media-driven
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
They were in the choir, they had a rehearsal immediately after Mass since it was near Christmas. Their robing room was located in a different area of the cathedral. The choir master said they were at the rehearsal. The accuser got the color of the wine incorrect. There would be many people in the sacristy right after Mass.
Wow, so you believe in "justice" on the principle of "even if you're innocent of this offense, you're probably guilty of a lot of others, so we'll punish you just the same"?
Last time I checked, the *legal* framework required "guilt [of the offenses *charged under the indictment*] beyond a reasonable doubt," not "well, you've got it coming anyway, so you're toast".
You would not want to be judged by a jury like that, I'll wager.
The friend who killed himself told his own mother that he was never abused.
No, I don't. And therefore your entire package of accusatory assumption is completely wrong. I expect an apology forthwith.
I do know that I am not impressed with the tendency to dump Catholics' civil rights overboard on display in this thread.
Hear this: In a free society, you do not get to deny people due process of law or the presumption of innocence because they belong to a group you don't like. You don't get to deny people due process of law or the presumption of innocence because you're certain they're guilty of something somehow, even if they're innocent of the charge that has been brought. You don't get to deny people due process of law or the presumption of innocence because other people who belong to the same group did bad things (i.e., "guilt by association").
In Germany in the 1940's, it was wrong to deny people due process of law and the presumption of innocence because they were Jewish, or Gypsy, or Polish.
It remains just as wrong if you change "Germany" to "Australia" or "America" and change "Jewish" to "Catholic" or "Muslim" or "Buddhist".
Sometimes this place sounds a lot more like NascentCriminalDictatorship than FreeRepublic.
It’s what I presumed others thought and that is quite explicit.
Your apology, or the last I hear of you, either one is fine.
It's Australia, so there's that.
That doesn’t mean anything. Denial causes things like that.
Who do you see as lying down and as the dogs and the fleas?
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