Cardinal Pell shows the problem with false prosecutions

Cardinal Pell was finally cleared of the witch-hunt that the left was waging against him.

To put it in perspective the prosecutions key claims was that the story being told by the alleged victim--who was a teenager at the time and told no one about the alleged attack for years-- was so outrageous so unbelievable, so inconsistent with facts, so inconceivable that it must be true.

Using that logic if someone said that Obama murdered babies in occult rituals when witnesses say he couldn't possibly have been away from people to conduct those rituals then Obama should be found guilty.

Clearly that's insane.

Apparently the prosecutor has never heard of people making up stories.

But it happens. Cardinal Bernadine of Chicago was accused of molesting a teenager but the man, who didn't mention the alleged crime for years, later recanted and admitted he made it all up.

There's even a whole book about priests who were falsely accused.  This in no way means that no priests molest anyone but that if there is no supporting evidence, if there is evidence that contradicts the alleged victims claim it's not responsible to simply assume that despite the facts the accuser is always telling the truth.

In the Pell case the evidence was rock solid that in fact the event described by the accuser could never  have happened.

The alleged victim claims that Pell assaulted him right after a Sunday Mass at the Cathedral.

But 20 witnesses said that there was no way that Pell would be alone for even a few minutes.  If you're Catholic you know that after Mass the priest goes to the entrance of the Church and talks with folks.

In addition Cardinals are always followed around by another priest and so there is no way that that priest wouldn't have noticed the Cardinal stripping down which he'd have to do since all the clothes he was wearing would have had to be removed for Pell to have done what he was alleged to have done.

The alleged victim also claimed that Pell assaulted him a second time in front of dozens of witnesses none of whom can be found.

Interestingly the original claim was that Pell assaulted two boys but the second boy told his mom twice, before he died of a heroin overdose, that Pell hadn't assaulted him.

What's also interesting is that at no point has any other accuser stepped forward.  That didn't phase the prosecution even though we've all learned from the #MeToo movement that sexual predators don't offend just once.

When Pell first went on trial the jury was 10 to 2 for acquittal.  But when the prosecution got a new jury, probably tainted by the propaganda war being waged against Pell by the leftist establishment, they found him guilty 12 to 0 even though they saw the exact same evidence.

Pell was a target because he opposed abortion and the redefinition of marriage.  In fact the police, who were found guilty of corrupt practices in other cases, were going around trying to find something to accuse him of before the alleged victim showed up.

Some of you may be thinking that because Pell is a Catholic priest it's likely that he's a molester.

However the facts don't show that.  Here's a few facts that the #FakeNews media don't share with you:

• Only 4% of priests have ever been accused of any sort of improper behavior--from talking dirty to rape
• According to insurance companies priests and ministers offend at the same rate; which is significantly lower than the offense rate of random adult males
• Almost all of the accusations involve teenagers--81% of the accused priests are gay
• Of the 300 accusations against priests Pennsylvania only 3 involved crimes allegedly committed in the last 33 years.
• Every year in PA hundreds of teachers are accused of sexual molestation of students
• The Church has taken serious steps to address the problem which peaked in the 1970s and by the 1990s was down to very low levels. Today we see 0.05% of priests being accused--not convicted-- of molestation in a random year.
• While some Bishops did shuffle around priests in most cases that was because a shrink had declared that the priest was cured. The Church figured out that that was bogus and stopped doing that decades ago.
• The public schools still shuffle around teachers accused of molestation.  Letting them leave with no mark on their record rather than prosecute them.

You can find an in detail discussion with links to primary sources here.

Now none of this makes the cases where a priest gravely sins by molesting a non-adult ok or not worth worrying about.  The point is that picking a priest at random, like Pell, the odds of him being a molester are 20 to 1 that he's not a molester.

We should pursue every case to see if in fact a crime has been committed but we shouldn't use lies to excuse a political witch-hunt against Catholic priests.