Chris S Friel destroys the prosecution case that resulted in the greatest miscarriage of justice in Australia’s history, demonstrating to what extent Australian state and society have been degraded.
There are many problems with the Crown’s submission to the High Court,i but here I shall spell outsome difficulties with the way that they now maintain howPell’s assault was possible.
A first point is that under cross-examination the complainant insisted that both assaults happened immediately after Mass.ii The defence, however, at the trial and in appeal, countered that this was impossible as what was done could not have gone undetected in that busy place. Tacitly, this is now conceded by the Crown. The difficulty with the “immediately after Mass” theory is that immediately after Mass the choirboys would have been in a procession.
That procession would have included altar servers who made up the front and the rear – two acolytes at the end being deputed to return the Archbishop’s mitre and crozier while he remained at the West Door. As the Crown no doubt realises, it has been demonstrated that the servers would have reached the sacristy first (because the boys took a circuitous route to the place where th eassault took place).iii It was not physically possible to get to the scene of the crime before them and also endure a five minute assault.