Paul,

"Now its some dodgy stats trying to paint paedophile clergy as being a small minority, less than societies average."

Well, what are the real stats?

Dear Is Mise,

I gave you the real stats, meticulously compiled through an extensive royal commission.

Even given the acknowledged under-reporting of this type of crime they make horrendous reading. They took a lot of brave people coming forward to give evidence and absolutely destroyed any figures like the ones you quote which came from the Catholic Church.

So why are you still giving them the slightest credence?

Dear Loudmouth,

You are still using the word assertion. He wasn't convicted on an assertion at all but rather a sworn testimony given and then rigorously cross examined over three days by one of the most high ranking defence teams in the country.

Steele,

Even if the 'witness' and his testimony were sworn on a stack of bibles, and he kissed the cross three times and spat, his testimony is still not much more than an assertion if it isn't backed up by something solid.

I wish it wasn't so, because it puts countless victims of pedophilia in no-win positions - after all, pedophiles are not stupid, they plan their crimes, single out the vulnerable, and try to leave no trace or commit their crimes without witnesses. Which is partly why victims don't go to the police straight away.

I hope that many, many other people have the courage to come forward and lay charges, backed up by some sort of evidence other than assertion, somehow, so that pedophiles can be prosecuted successfully and adequately.

Apart from all that, to avoid future crimes as much as possible, of course children shouldn't ever be in vulnerable situations, and most professionals, teachers, doctors, dentists, etc., (e.g. responsible parents) and maybe even priests, know that from Day One. Swimming pools should have separate adult-and-children change-rooms, etc. How hard can all that be ?

Cheers,

Joe

Steele,

"I gave you the real stats, meticulously compiled through an extensive royal commission."

as compiled for Australia, is there any valid reason to extrapolate them to the whole world?

For what it's worth I think that 2% is a ridiculously low figure for a worldwide assessment but I don't think that it would go as high as the Australian figures.

Dear Loudmouth,

The Royal Commission report contained many recommendations including these;

46. Common law principles or rules that restrict the admission of propensity or similar fact evidence should be explicitly abolished or excluded in relation to the admissibility of tendency or coincidence evidence about the defendant in a child sexual offence prosecution.

47. Issues of concoction, collusion or contamination should not affect the admissibility of tendency or coincidence evidence about the defendant in a child sexual offence prosecution. The court should determine admissibility on the assumption that the evidence will be accepted as credible and reliable, and the impact of any evidence of concoction, collusion or contamination should be left to the jury or other fact-finder.

48. Tendency or coincidence evidence about a defendant in a child sexual offence prosecution should not be required to be proved beyond reasonable doubt.

49. Evidence of: a. the defendant’s prior convictions b. acts for which the defendant has been charged but not convicted (other than acts for which the defendant has been acquitted) should be admissible as tendency or coincidence evidence if it otherwise satisfies the test for admissibility of tendency or coincidence evidence about a defendant in a child sexual offence prosecution.

65.

c. Uncorroborated evidence:
Legislation should provide that the judge must not direct, warn or suggest to the jury that it is ‘dangerous or unsafe to convict’ on the uncorroborated evidence of the complainant or that the uncorroborated evidence of the complainant should be ‘scrutinised with great care’.

d. Children’s evidence: Legislation should provide that: i. the judge must not direct, warn or suggest to the jury that children as a class are unreliable witnesses ii. the judge must not direct, warn or suggest to the jury that it would be ‘dangerous or unsafe to convict’ on the uncorroborated evidence of a child or that the uncorroborated evidence of a child should be ‘scrutinised with great care’ iii. the judge must not give a direction or warning about, or comment on, the reliability of a child’s evidence solely on account of the age of the child.

I support them all.

Well, after all those posts, nobody has changed his stance on the jailing of George Pell, and neither has the editor of Quadrant Online, quoting from Fr. Raymond J. de Souza's article for the 'National Catholic Register': "Calling Cardinal Pell’s Prosecution What It Is: Religious Persecution".

"Now that the peculiar “suppression order” in Australia has been lifted, we are free to state what has been evident for several years now. The prosecution of Cardinal Pell has been a monstrous miscarriage of justice, a religious persecution carried out by prosecutorial means."

The article goes on to say:

" .... There is no shame that Cardinal Pell is in jail; the shame is sufficiently abundant to be worn by all those who put him there…"

And whole show was a "sustained and calculated strategy to corrupt the criminal-justice system toward politically motivated ends".

de Souza opines that this miscarriage wasn't a mistake. It was done with " and prosecutorial malice aforethought". He doesn't blame the jury. He does blame the "... highly trained and experienced police officers and prosecutors (who) decided that the former archbishop of Sydney was guilty even before any charges were brought whatsoever."

Pell was convicted on the testimony of a 'single witness' who presented and 'incredible' story without 'corroboration ... physical evidence .... or previous pattern of behaviour'.

The full article can be read from the editorial section of Quadrant; no paywall