True. But their credibility is being assessed now, when they’re adults. Certainly allowances are made for the lapse of time and loss of memory, or incorrect memory, of details.
Pell had a huge dossier of interviews with people alleging clergy abuse against children in his NSW/ACT Archdiocese. I knew the woman he hired to conduct the interviews ( ex AFP specialising in child sexual abuse, expertise in strict protocols for collecting the evidence) . IDK whether these were ever handed over to the cops or just used for compensation claims.
@Shelton10 do you believe there was police/DPP bias in the Pell case? I’m surprised that the brief was authorised to charge Pell based on my very superficial knowledge of the case/evidence. Seems to me if the police “want to go after you” they do. I had a close friend who got accused of a sexual assault by a vexatious ex - in the end my friend was able to prove the alleged victim wasn’t in the same city on the dates she said she was assaulted. During his interview with Police where the claims were put to him he said “she wasn’t in Melbourne at the time”…… the police said oh that’s not really important - the allegations are more important. To me that was crazy for the Police to say that. Eventually no charges were laid but but the police gave him a very hard time. My point is - I’ve seen first hand police bias against an alleged offender. Do you believe this happened with Pell?
The DPP did not authorise any charges. The DPP dodged the question and said it was a matter for the police, i.e., the police should make the decision whether to charge or not. The police did decide to charge him. I think they were wrong to do so because the only evidence in support of the charges was one complainant’s recollection, and the story he told was inherently unlikely to the point of being not credible.
Forgive my ignorance @Shelton10 - but doesn’t the DPP have to authorise a brief for charges to be laid in these types of cases ? Ie they have to sign off on charges being laid in sexual assault cases when it’s word against word ?
I’m not a criminal lawyer. I did commercial cases. So I don’t know the details. But apparently in this case the DPP did what I said. All the newspapers said so at the time and nobody has ever said otherwise.
Ok @Shelton10 so my read on it is the police decided to charge Pell with what would appear to be minimal or very thin evidence -and were hoping the jury would overlook that and find Pell guilty - perhaps they felt like there would be jury bias against Pell because there was a lot of negative sentiment towards the Catholic Church (due to a number of actual sexual assaults being perpetrated by priests). Maybe I haven’t explained myself well - but effectively the police were relying on the jury to make their case for them
I don’t know, but I suspect the police who made the decision believed that Pell was guilty, despite the lack of evidence. Just as the second jury did. I suspect that they couldn’t accept that the evidence was extremely weak. I don’t know why they lost their objectivity in that particular case.
Ok thanks @Shelton10 ……based on what I’ve read, I believe the Police should apologise to Pell. If they felt he was guilty but still went ahead to charge him with flimsy evidence - then this reflects poorly on the police and our whole criminal justice system. I’m not a Pell supporter but I believe in a fair go and innocent until proven guilty - I don’t think Pell received this
the charged him with a crime in a victorian court, which saw a conviction, the high court for reasons decided on acquittal, i do not see a reason for the police to apologise.
The judge was highly competent, but he didn’t make the decision. I haven’t read his charge to the jury. In another case where a defendant was wrongly convicted, the trial judge summed up the evidence in a way that clearly indicated that he thought that Lindy and Michael Chamberlain should not be convicted, but the jury went ahead and convicted them .
I understand and I respect that - my view is different and I was following Shelton’s opinion that the police lost their objectivity. It may also be the police got lucky in the second case - either the judge made errors or the jury was biased ??