Should Pell be hanged?

[Bobby]

I've decided that Pell shouldn't be hanged.
The reason is that the test of " beyond reasonable doubt"
is not strong enough to hang anyone.
The slightest bit of doubt is enough that they should win a reprieve from hanging.

The test should be - no doubt whatsoever - and
in this case there is too much doubt.
It's just one man's word against another.

[cods]

so at what point did you decide.there is a smiggin of doubt?

The slightest bit of doubt is enough that they should win a reprieve from hanging.

from where I sit it has been there all along!

why has it taken you so long to wake up to that small fact bobby?.

[rhino]

And isnt it very telling that neither of you has expressed any sympathy for the victims, one of whom took his own life.

https://www.news.com.au/national/victor ... 73eb02e96f
Why the complainant in George Pell’s trial was so compelling
She acknowledged on 7.30 on Tuesday night there had been a “lot of doubters” about the case but something she’s always said to people through the years was: “I defy anyone to meet this man and not think that he is telling the truth.

“He has absolutely nothing to gain from this and everything to lose.”

In her book Milligan calls Pell’s complainant The Kid and described him as an ideal witness from a police point of view.

“The Kid has not led a chequered life,” Milligan notes in her book. “He’s university-educated, he hasn’t had trouble with the law. He has a lovely young girlfriend, lots of friends, he’s a pillar of his community in a sort of understated, slightly ironic way, and in that part of his life, he is, he told me, very happy.

“He’s managed, just, to keep it together. He’s been able to compartmentalise. He’s the sort of complainant you’d want as a Victoria Police detective alleging historic crime.”
Author Louise Milligan said the complainant decided to come forward after the death his friend (referred to as The Choirboy in her book).

Unlike The Kid, who managed to compartmentalise the trauma and went on to lead a somewhat normal life, his friend The Choirboy spiralled out of control like so many others who have experienced abuse at a young age.

The Kid and The Choirboy both got choral scholarships to the exclusive St Kevin’s College because of their beautiful singing voices and they became friends.

Milligan interviewed the mother of The Choirboy, who described a sudden change in her son when he was 13 or 14 years old. Soon after he began dabbling in heroin and struggled with addiction for about 15 years.

In 2014 he died of a heroin overdose when he was 30 years old.

The Kid attended his friend’s funeral and a few months later The Choirboy’s mother Mary got a call from Victoria Police wanting to know if her son had ever mentioned a sexual assault.

Something clicked. Mary had twice asked her son if he had been a victim of abuse — something just didn’t feel right about her son’s behaviour — but he had always denied it.

After years of keeping the secret, never discussing it, even with his friend, The Kid decided he had to come forward, for himself and for The Choirboy.

“The Kid told Mary that her son’s funeral was the breaking point for him. It was plunged him into despair and regret,” Milligan’s book said.

Mary believes The Kid’s story and can’t imagine what he has to gain by coming forward.

Somehow, The Kid’s story also got through to those 12 jurors at Melbourne’s Victorian County Court. They were some of the few people who have heard his testimony and despite the odds stacked up against it, they believed him.

[Black Orchid]

ABC reporter Louise Milligan has peddled an implausiby lurid claim: that Cardinal George Pell caught two choir boys drinking altar wine after Mass at St Patrick's Cathedral and made them give him oral sex.

Melbourne University Press has even published Milligan's book detailing this allegation, which police have spent more than a year investigating.

And now a priest who was always with Pell at Mass at this cathedral says it simply could not have happened.

But first: from the very start this allegation seemed almost literally unbelievable.

Pell, an ambitious man then in his late 50s, would suddenly do something so reckless and criminal - something he'd never been accused of before?

Pell would force two boys to do this, knowing how much higher the risk was of being reported and found guilty, given the boys could corroborate each other's story?

The boys would be so ashamed of sipping altar wine that they'd comply with demands for oral sex?

Pell would do this just when he was leading the first campaign by any Catholic leader here to clean out pedophiles in his church, and knowing the media was already out for his blood?

But then the allegation got even less likely.

One of the boys actually denied any such abuse happened, and has since died of a drug overdose. There is in fact just one accuser.

Then this: a man I trust was a senior chorister at St Patrick's at the time, and was usually the last to leave services. He tells me Pell inevitably stayed after the Mass at the door of the Cathedral to talk to and say goodbye to worshippers. In that time the boys of the choir would have left for home or sport. They didn't hang around.

This chorister also knows the identity of the accuser. He cannot give the allegations credence.

Police have finally been interviewing other choristers. I know of only one of them, but he, too, cannot believe the allegations.

[Black Orchid]

A priest who says he accompanied George Pell every time he was at St Patrick’s Cathedral has challenged one of the most salacious allegations against the former archbishop of Melbourne — that he abused two teenage choir boys in a backroom of the Cathedral — in an interview with Victoria Police.

The priest, who was on the then-Archbishop’s staff from September 1996 to January 2001 told police late last year it was “physically impossible for Archbishop Pell to have been alone with anyone in the Cathedral, before, during, or after the celebration of Sunday Mass or on any other occasion’’...

The priest, who has refused to become embroiled in a defence-by-media, answered police questions related to an alleged incident after a Sunday Mass at the Cathedral between July and December one year. Cathedral publications and photographs show the building was closed for restoration for most of that year until a Saturday night in November, when a Vigil Mass was held to celebrate Christ the King.

Milligan does not put a date on the alleged incident, but implies it occurred before the lead up to Easter the following year...

Those familiar with the allegation, and who understand the workings of a cathedral, believed from the outset the claim was preposterous — especially the suggestion that the then Archbishop found the boys helping themselves to altar wine in a backroom. The priest told The Australian he was questioned extensively by police about altar wine, that was locked in a vault, with valuable chalices. Only about a teaspoonful was ever left over after Masses...

The 11am Mass was celebrated by Archbishop Pell when he was in Melbourne, the priest told police. The Archbishop, who lived at Kew, a few kilometres from the Cathedral, would arrive about 15 minutes before mass. He would be met by the priest and they would head towards the Archbishop’s sacristy (a room for keeping vestments and dressing for Mass...). On their way into the Cathedral, the Archbishop and the priest would pass the Choir Rehearsal Room, in an adjoining building. At that stage, the priest said, about 50 choir members would be rehearsing in the choir room, which the Archbishop never entered...

“At no time before, during or after Mass was the Archbishop in direct contact with anyone except that I was present,’’ the priest told police in a statement. “I was always standing next to him and usually at an arm’s length away.’’

Mass would start at 11am and finish at about 12.10pm. The Archbishop would then stand at the front door of the Cathedral, greeting people who had attended.

By the time the Archbishop and the priest returned to the sacristy the congregation, servers and choir had usually left the premises.

[Black Orchid]

Gerard Henderson has also noted factual errors and suggestions of clear bias in Milligan's book, as has another reviewer.

Meanwhile, what hope of justice for Pell who has been treated as guilty from the start by a media that has presented rumors as evidence, allegations as fact and falsehoods as true? Several allegations already against Pell have proved clearly false. One false claim was made by a man the media refused to reveal was himself convicted for sex offences against children.

But all the usual proprieties have been junked when it comes to Pell. We even had Justice Peter McClellan, the head of the royal commission into child abuse that grilled Pell with such hostility, volunteer to speak at the state funeral of Peter Foster, one of Pell's most hostile critics. This, while the royal commission is still weighing the case against Pell in its report into the Ballarat diocese.

Shouldn't royal commissioners, like judges, be seen to be impartial?

The MC for the service was ABC host Jon Faine, who was not actually a personal friend of Foster and has been a loud critic of Pell and a promoter of Milligan's book. Isn't our biggest broadcaster also meant to be impartial?

Victoria Police, in turn, is led by a man who made damaging claims against the church, including allegations of a failure to refer abuse claims to police, that have proved untrue. Are the police impartial?

Against all this, what hope does Pell have?

If he proves to be as innocent as he claims, and that I suspect, this will have been the most disgusting and pitiless and savage witchhunt that I can recall in Victoria in my lifetime.

I suspect so many people and so many institutions have become so complicit in this that backing out now will seem too embarrassing for them to even contemplate.

And so the witch hunt continues.

https://www.heraldsun.com.au/blogs/andr ... 1551308969

[Bobby]

so at what point did you decide.there is a smiggin of doubt?

The slightest bit of doubt is enough that they should win a reprieve from hanging.

from where I sit it has been there all along!

why has it taken you so long to wake up to that small fact bobby?.

I was too eager to hang em.
What if later the victim changed his story?

[mellie]

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-n ... urtroom-43


Pell pulled out his penis and approached the other boy, grabbing his head.

The complainant asked Pell, “Can you let us go? We didn’t do anything.”

“I could see his [the boy’s] head being lowered towards his [Pell’s] genitalia,” the complainant recalled. “Then he sort of started squirming, he was struggling. His head was being controlled and it was down near archbishop Pell’s genitals. I was no more than a couple of metres away.”

This took place for about a minute or two. Pell stopped and turned to the complainant.

“And then he put his penis into my mouth. Archbishop Pell was standing, he was erect, and he pushed it into my mouth. He instructed me to undo my pants and take off my pants, and I did that. And then he started touching my genitalia. Archbishop Pell was touching himself on his penis with his other hand.”

When it was over the complainant, in shock, pulled up his pants. The boys left the room and tried to rejoin the procession before returning their robes.

No, hangings too good for him, might I suggest something degrading, progressive, terminal ... and potentially longer term, than a prison sentence.

Might I suggest Parkinson's disease.


This way he will struggle to keep it up, while struggling to chew and keep food down, will struggle with the most simplest of tasks, like tying his laces, brushing his teeth, masterbating , driving and then lose control over his own bodily functions in public places.
Then, even if he wanted to end it all, he wont have the dexterity or fine/gross motor skills to do this even, though cognitively, will be very much aware and trapped within his own shaking corpse for at least a decade more to ponder how miserable he made vulnerable others feel.

Sometimes, less is so much more.

Couldn't have happened to a nicer bloke.

[Bobby]

No, hangings too good for him, might I suggest something degrading, progressive, terminal ... and potentially longer term, than a prison sentence.

Might I suggest Parkinson's disease.


This way he will struggle to keep it up, while struggling to chew and keep food down, will struggle with the most simplest of tasks, like tying his laces, brushing his teeth, masterbating , driving and then lose control over his own bodily functions in public places.
Then, even if he wanted to end it all, he wont have the dexterity or fine/gross motor skills to do this even, though cognitively, will be very much aware and trapped within his own shaking corpse for at least a decade more to ponder how miserable he made vulnerable others feel.

Sometimes, less is so much more.

Couldn't have happened to a nicer bloke.

Let's wait for the appeal.
They might find him innocent.
He faces sentencing in 2 days. 13th March 2019.

[mellie]

Just the fact he knew about others doing it, and turned a blind eye, is guilty enough.

I have a feeling this appeal of his wont make a difference, in this life or the next.

Another who's going to die hard.