LITTLE ROCK (AR)
Bilgrimage blog
March 15, 2019
By William Lindsey
The jailing of Cardinal George Pell resonates because he was so powerful in an institution that covered up the abuses of its clerics.
In commenting on Cardinal Pell’s conviction and sentence, Michael Cook’s Lessons from Cardinal Pell’s 6-year jail sentence makes a move that should trouble all of us concerned about shoring up the legitimacy of court systems and criminal justice systems in democratic societies. Cook opens by reminding us of that Pell was conficted on the basis of the testimony of one person testifying behind closed doors.
He then goes on to state,
The Pell trial shows that the victim will be presumed to be truthful when he steps into the witness box.
This is something none of us who were not in that closed-door court hearing can possibly know or affirm with any certainty. Because the hearing was, as Cook himself reminds us, a closed-door hearing… It is a judgment without any substance when it’s offered by anyone who was not at the closed-door hearing in which testimony was given.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.