Paul Collits has again raised some deeply disturbing questions about Victoria Police’s role in the jailing of Cardinal George Pell, not the least of which is VicPol’s apparent campaign ‘to get Pell’. Collis’s ten questions must be answered to restore confidence in the state’s police force already rocked to it foundations by the frightening ‘Lawyer X Affair’.
Ten Sets of Questions for VicPol on the Pell Case
by Paul Collits, The Freedom Project website established and edited by Kathy Clubb
Whatever the outcome of the upcoming High Court appeal by Cardinal Pell against his conviction on sex abuse charges, and despite the continuing social media tirades against the man and the undying hatred expressed by Pell haters against his small band of public defenders, there has been a recent, ever-so-subtle turn in elite opinion towards the possibility of an Alfred Dreyfus/Lindy Chamberlain scenario here. That the man may have been wrongly convicted. This is evidenced by some support for Pell’s innocence from unlikely quarters, and suggests hope against hope for justice. Andrew Bolt has commented on it. Yet, despite these tentative signs of hope, and the pleasant surprise, against the odds, that the High Court even decided to hear an appeal, there is still a massive job of work to be done in order to restore the Cardinal’s reputation.
There is also an astonishingly long list of unanswered questions about the Pell case, including questions about the highly unorthodox investigation undertaken by Victoria Police into his possible commission of acts of sex abuse against minors.
Indeed, one of the institutions clearly hoping for a final dismissal of Pell’s claims of a miscarriage of justice will be Victoria Police. Whatever one thinks of the Court of Appeal majority judgement – and there has been an utter evisceration of that judgement by lawyers, scholars, Catholic and non-Catholic journalists, researchers and bloggers, not to mention by Mr Justice Weinberg in his powerful dissenting judgement – the organisation perhaps most invested in “getting Pell” is, without doubt, VicPol.
