‘If words have meaning, sir!’

Part Two of the ‘60 Minutes’ ambush of the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney

At perhaps the most manipulative moment during Richard Carleton’s badgering of Archbishop Pell, and with a display of hypocrisy that is rarely attained even in the media, Carleton exclaimed in spluttering indignation, ‘If words have meaning, sir!’

He was responding to Archbishop Pell’s claim that he (the Archbishop) ‘offered them nothing’ after Carleton had accused him of offering the parents of two abused girls $50,000 ‘to be quiet’.

It is clear from the context of the conversation (the transcript is available on the Channel 9 web site) that Archbishop Pell meant that he personally had offered the parents nothing, but that the offer came from the independent panel that had been set up by the Archbishop to deal with sex abuse charges against Catholic religious. It is entirely understandable that Archbishop Pell immediately wanted to refute the idea that he had personally offered any money. After all, he had just been subjected to Carleton’s fabricated case that he had attempted to bribe David Ridsdale to keep silent.

This episode during the ‘60 Minutes’ kangaroo court, which reached the climax Carleton was looking for, is painfully illustrative of one of the program’s key assumptions. You see, Richard Carleton and the ‘60 Minutes’ team are obviously convinced that the bulk of their audience is just as bigoted as they are. In disregarding Archbishop Pell’s unambiguous clarification of the process of offering compensation, Carleton was just pumping the bigotry he thought was salivating on the edges of thousands of lounge chairs around the nation. Let me go now to the start of Part Two of the ’60 Minutes’ ‘program’ to reveal how he cunningly laid the foundation for this bigotry-bursting climax. We will witness the media at its worst – or best if you are a media boss.

The Archbishop walks into the media trap

The scene for Part Two is a cheerless room somewhere in a building of the Catholic Church in Sydney. An unsuspecting Archbishop is sitting at a small table opposite Richard Carleton who has the necessary props to create the impression of an investigative journalist at work. Carleton begins by asking how widespread sexual abuse by Catholic clergy is presently in Australia. Now it may not occur to the viewer but this seemingly inoffensive introduction is a typical journalist trap. Whichever way Archbishop Pell answers, he is going to look bad. Carleton knows it; he knows that this will give him an unstoppable momentum.

If the Archbishop answers that sexual abuse is not widespread and is now contained, Carleton’s immediate response will be to ask how he can be sure. After all, the Archbishop and others claim they were unaware of past abuses. Or is now he covering up? If he answers that he cannot be entirely sure (which nobody could be), the Archbishop will give the impression he has not got a tight rein on the problem of sexual abuse, that for all he knows sexual abuse could be as ‘rampant’ as it always has been. Thus the Archbishop will seem incompetent and negligent. It’s this second that Carleton wants and gets. Archbishop Pell, not being omniscient, has to say that he has set in place procedures to discover and deal with past abuse, that he is confident the problem is under control, but that one can never be sure… To this Carleton, displaying the usual propensity to distort, says, ‘So you concede that some is probably going on.’ The Archbishop was conceding no such thing but it was enough for Carleton to create that impression.

Most clerical sexual abuse is homosexual in nature

Then unexpectedly Carleton slots in a question that focuses on one of the crucial issues of sexual abuse by the clergy. This question not only concerns the Church in Australia but the universal Church in the post-conciliar period. Here is the question and the Archbishop’s answer:

CARLETON: Now, is it homosexual sex or heterosexual sex among the clergy that is the bigger problem?

ARCHBISHOP PELL: Most paedophilia involves young girls. With the Catholic clergy more of it involves younger men after puberty.

With his question Carleton touches on a subject whose discussion has been blazing across internet sites around the world and belatedly through the American media. The fact that he deliberately makes the contrast between homosexual and heterosexual behaviour in the discussion of clerical sexual abuse shows that he and the ‘60 Minutes’ team are aware of the raging discussion and its wide-ranging implications. He would know the significance of Archbishop Pell’s answer. There is now too much evidence to deny that the sexual abuse by Catholic clergy has to do with homosexual behaviour. Strictly speaking, paedophilia concerns the sexual abuse of children under ten years, that is, pre-pubescent children; the problem of sexual abuse in the Church has almost exclusively to do with the abuse by adult male clerics of pubescent males.

What does intrepid investigative reporter Richard Carleton do with this information? He does nothing. He asks the right question for once and then walks away from an ugly problem whose tentacles reach around the world. It’s all too hot for Richard, far too much for his low levels of courage. The last thing he would do is take up the battle against the dark tower of political correctness and the barren plains of moral devastation it imposes on its surroundings. A media Gandalf he certainly is not. He would rather serve the dark tower and help the PC orcs bring down one of the few men who have the courage to stand for truth and decency. That’s a far easier and more profitable task in the venal world he is at one with.

Smearing the Archbishop with the deeds of others

He then moves on to an estimate of how many Catholic clergy have been convicted of sexual abuse. Citing figures from the implacable Broken Rites Group, he settles on the figure of one conviction a month over a ten year period. Archbishop Pell agrees that that is probably right. This sets up the Archbishop nicely. Carleton immediately goes to Archbishop Pell’s former position of Episcopal Vicar for education in Ballarat thus superficially linking him with the figure of one a month. The real purpose here, however, is to link the responsibility of the position of Episcopal Vicar for education with the cases of sexual abuse in the Ballarat area. But when Carleton says that this position meant that the Archbishop at the time was ‘effectively the boss of Catholic teachers’ and the buck stopped with him, the Archbishop corrects him by saying that the position was ‘titular’ and ‘part-time’ and the final responsibility rested with the director of education. Let’s now have a look at how this skilled $500,000-investigative reporter dealt with the clarity of the Archbishop’s answer:

CARLETON (sanctimoniously poking and punching the air with his index finger): I want to know how much responsibility you take personally for those teachers under you in those ten years that you were there who abused their charges? [sic]

ARCHBISHOP PELL: I wouldn’t take any direct responsibility at all because I was not aware of any accusations that I didn’t deal with.

CARLETON (the mock respect has gone and he almost sneers): No, but wasn’t it your job to know what was going on?

ARCHBISHOP PELL: Well, no, because I wasn’t the executive running education.

CARLETON: Archbishop, isn’t that ducking the responsibility.

ARCHBISHOP PELL: No, it is a description of what in fact happened.

CARLETON: What should have happened is really what I’m trying to get to.

No, Richard, that’s quite clearly not what you are after. You are trying to nail the Archbishop for a responsibility he clearly did not have and you will make whatever move is necessary to achieve your purpose. If that takes lying, distortion and misrepresentation, and ignoring the plain language of the Archbishop’s answers, then so be it. For you and ‘60 Minutes’ there are far more important things at stake here than truth, decency and goodness.

Carleton blithely ignores the truth

Confident that he has made the required link in the mind of the viewer, Carleton moves onto the next important link he wants to make: the link with one of the worst of the sexual abusers, Fr Gerald Ridsdale. With a tone of voice full of meaning Carleton asks a series of questions whose answers are meant to reveal that the Archbishop was at the same school, the same seminary and lived in same house as Fr Ridsdale. The object is to make a close association between the two. Satisfied he has done that, Carleton says he presumes the Archbishop did not know at the time that Ridsdale ‘was a heinous paedophile’. When the Archbishop replied that he had no idea at the time, Carleton acts out incredulity, shock and horror in a way only he has perfected.

CARLETON: How could you not know? How could you not know after going to school with him, going to seminary with him, growing up with him, living with him?

Despite the Archbishop’s clarifications of his school, seminary, and priestly connections with Fr Gerald Ridsdale (they were slight), Carleton continued to create the false impression for the vast viewing audience that the connection could not be closer. It is damning and it is guilt by association and it is done with vindictiveness and malice aforethought. Archbishop Pell released a public statement (3 June 2002) refuting and correcting the substance of Carleton’s lying efforts. With regard to his former position as Episcopal Vicar of Education and his connections with Fr Gerald Ridsdale and Ballarat, he stated the following:

I was appointed junior assistant to Ballarat East – a busy parish with 5 Catholic schools and a Catholic teachers’ college early in 1973. During those years there were always three of four priests in residence.

I was never appointed as chaplain to St Alipius Boys School and never worked there.

I was appointed Episcopal Vicar of Education, a non-executive part-time position representing the bishop on 25 March 1973. My main task was to chair the diocesan education board, an advisory group on policy.

In 1974 I was appointed Principal of the Aquinas Campus of Institute of Catholic Education in Ballarat, a tertiary college of advanced education preparing teachers for Catholic schools. This was more than a fulltime job. I was in Melbourne on one or two days a week.

I had no direct role in the appointment or supervision of teachers.

Gerald Ridsdale was born in 1934. I was born in 1941. We were never in any seminary together. I was training at Werribee 1960-63 and Rome 1963-67. He was training at Werribee 1954-58; Genoa 1958; Ireland 1960-61.

I always strive to work amicably with all my brother priests. This included Gerald Ridsdale. We were never close friends and overlapped at St Alipius for about a year.

These unassailable facts, which in a half decent world would destroy Carleton’s credibility forever, demonstrate how bereft he is of decency, honesty, fair dealing, even-handedness, in a word, of all those qualities one would expect an honest competent effective journalist to possess. The implications of Carleton’s unabashed fabrications, however, are wider than just the consideration of his character. After all, he has been performing this sort of dirty work for his media bosses for a long time (rarely as dirty as this, though) and one would have to be stupid not to have noticed. The mock respect and obsequiousness he subjects his victims to, is his very own signature and makes his efforts instantly recognisable around the nation.

The media organisations who commission the journalist to lie

No, the wider implication concerns once again the unconscionable media organisations who pay a person like Richard Carleton to do the dirty deeds. When an organisation undertakes such a concerted effort to perpetrate a blazing injustice on prime time television and shows it is supremely confident they can get away with it, then the observer cannot avoid the thought there is something deeply corrupt about the media in Australia and that one would be a fool to place any trust in it. If Australian media consumers had any sense they would hold the following motto firmly before their mind: DON’T TRUST THE MEDIA.

With the associations fabricated between Archbishop Pell and clerical abuse, Carleton then confronted the Archbishop with David Ridsdale’s accusations. At every point, and with a visible effort to overcome the consternation caused by the replaying of his accuser’s foul words, Archbishop Pell strenuously denied he at any time attempted to bribe David Ridsdale to keep quiet. It is not necessary to go into the Archbishop’s replies here. He has publicly rejected the accusations and mounted his own defence. I refer the reader to (www.sydney.catholic.org.au). I cannot improve on that. The whole ‘60 Minutes’ case, particularly David Ridsdale’s accusations, crumbles in the face of Archbishop Pell’s public statement, the details of which have yet to be challenged. On the other hand, there are serious questions that Carleton and ‘60 Minutes’ should clarify for the public.

What is David Ridsdale background?

In my analysis of Part One of the '60 Minutes' program, I raised serious questions about David Ridsdale’s credibility and the striking similarity between his rhetoric and the rhetoric of the homosexualist organisations attacking the Church. What I did not know at the time was that ‘60 Minutes’ flew David Ridsdale in from London to make the program. Why was this not mentioned by ‘60 Minutes’? Why were no details at all given of David Ridsdale’s background or of his possible political affiliations?

I have heard a reliable but unconfirmed report that David Ridsdale is living in a homosexual relationship in London. If this is true, it constitutes an appalling cover-up by Carleton and ‘60 Minutes’ of information that is of critical importance, all the more given that Carleton was relying on strategic associations to make Archbishop Pell look guilty of a cover-up and of failing in his responsibilities. One wonders how much else ‘60 Minutes’ is not telling us about David Ridsdale and his background. There is a real contrast here between the open public information about Archbishop Pell (all of which is readily scrutinised) and his main accuser.

The close connections Carleton and ‘60 Minutes’ fabricated between Archbishop Pell and Fr Gerald Ridsdale and the general sexual abuse in the Ballarat area were not only designed to hold the Archbishop morally responsible for the depraved actions of others, they were also designed to create the impression that Archbishop Pell had serious motivation to cover-up the sexual abuse both for his sake and the Catholic Church’s good reputation. It is this aspect that Carleton hammers at the end of Part Two of the '60 Minutes' program.

In the most heartless fashion, Carleton exploits the tragic case of the abuse of two pre-pubescent girls by Fr O’Donnell to make his case. Because of its tragic nature, I am reluctant to examine or challenge publicly the details of this case and the accusations brought by the parents against Archbishop Pell. The Archbishop makes an adequate answer to those accusations in his public statement of 3 June 2002 and I refer the reader to that (www.sydney.catholic.org.au). The important point here for Carleton and the ‘60 Minutes’ program is the matter of confidentiality attached to the legal settlement of abuse cases. The background to the legal settlement of such cases is quite clear and public. The vast resources of the Nine Network would have had no trouble in finding out that background and they probably did know. Only, it did not suit their objectives to use the truth of the circumstances on this occasion.

The procedure and the agencies a victim of clerical abuse can follow and appeal to are outlined in Archbishop’s statement of 3 June 2002. It is only necessary here to establish the main points with regard to Carleton’s despicable attempt to characterise these procedures and agencies as Archbishop Pell’s effort to shut victims up.

Trying to pin the charge of hush money on the Archbishop

Archbishop Pell established the procedures of the Compensation Panel in 1996. The agencies attached to the Compensation Panel were independent of the Archbishop…and headed by respected members of the legal profession. ‘The panel was designed to eliminate legal costs for the victims and once the Independent Commissioners determination…was given the Church did not oppose compensation to the victim.’

This is nothing secret about this. From the start it has been open and there was no question of ‘hush money’ prior to the cases going before the panel. The payment made to the victim is public and in normal language is called ‘compensation’. As it turned out, despite some confusion among the Church hierarchy, there is no confidentiality clause to be attached to the final determination and compensation. But even if there were a confidentiality clause then such an agreement would be in line with common legal practice. There is nothing unusual here. I invite the reader to go back over the reports in the newspapers of high profile cases of damages claimed by a plaintiff. There would be few cases settled out of court without a confidentiality clause.

What we have in Carleton’s case (and hysterically followed in all the rags around Australia) was not at all a case of paying hush money. Hush money is paid to keep all knowledge of a particular case out of the public domain – to keep it completely out of public scrutiny, legal or otherwise. It means keeping all detail secret. A recent case of hush money being paid came to light in America. Archbishop Weakland of Milwaukee, long complained about by orthodox Catholics, paid a former seminarian to keep quiet about the affair they had many years ago. This was a case of hush money because the incident was kept secret from the public – until the former seminarian broke the agreement and went to the media. The public procedures and agencies Archbishop Pell set up bear no resemblance at all to the case of Archbishop Weakland.

The difference in the two cases does not demand the fine intellect of an Aristotle. It’s as plain as plain language can tell it. But you see, a pretend journalist like Carleton pays no regard to such distinctions. His actions show he has no conscience, no idea of the right and wrong of what he is doing. His efforts as a ‘journalist’ simply reflect activity that is meant to provide newsworthy print and images. He and his masters judge his activity on the basis of how much air time and newspaper space he can generate – and the level of revenue arising from that generation. The rest is crap for them.

It is bemusing in the extreme to hear an obscenely paid master of misrepresentation and distortion exclaiming to one of the truly decent men on the public stage in Australia,

If words have meaning, Sir!

Yes, indeed, Mr Carleton, Sir, words do have meaning.

22 July 2002