Case against Cardinal George Pell Falls down for Lack of Evidence

By Gerard Henderson
Weekend Australian
November 5, 2016

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If there is to be a media prize for unbalanced advocacy in journalism then last Monday’s coverage by the ABC’s 7.30 of Cardinal ­George Pell deserves to be short-listed at the very least.

Louise Milligan reported on the submission of Gail Furness, counsel assisting the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, which had been released earlier that day for consideration by commission chairman Justice Peter McClellan. For the third time in recent months, the tone of Milligan’s ­report on Pell was hostile. She claimed it was “considered likely” that the royal commission “will make some adverse findings against the cardinal”. Milligan did not say precisely who (allegedly) considers this to be the case.

Early in her report, Milligan said the “royal commission found” that, from 1976, the consultors (who, for a time, included Pell) to Bishop Ronald Mulkearns in Ballarat “had known … that [the Catholic priest Gerald] Ridsdale was abusing children”.

In fact, what was released on Monday was Furness’s submissions to the royal commission. Not the findings of the royal commission.