 |
|
|
| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
David 
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
|
| Post subject: |  |
|
On a different tack, I highly recommend this article on the pointlessness of the suppression order:
https://insidestory.org.au/pells-freeze-is-over/
| Quote: | Peter Kidd’s goal in making his order, while worthy, was impossible to achieve. There is far too much interest in Pell’s case for its secrets to remain remotely secret. Yes, Australian media could be expected to obey Kidd’s order (until they didn’t), but international media are another matter altogether. As for social media, plenty of people were willing to breach Kidd’s order, out of ignorance or otherwise. I found out about Pell’s conviction hours after it happened the way many did: because his name trended on Twitter.
All the chief judge could really achieve was to keep Pell’s verdict out of the mainstream local media. In the past, that might have been enough. But today the many breaches of Kidd’s order meant that the real story was always just a web search or an overheard conversation away. Yes, the order would have assisted in finding twelve jurors willing to say that they knew nothing about the first trial or verdict. Many of them might even have been telling the truth. And some of them might somehow have refrained from googling Pell or mentioning the trial to a spouse or neighbour until the verdict was in. But what are the odds that any of them, let alone all of them, would remain spoiler-free by the trial’s end? And yet, that goal was the sole point of Kidd’s order. |
_________________
All watched over by machines of loving grace |
|
|
|
 |
K
Joined: 09 Sep 2011
|
| Post subject: | |
|
Sure, news got out. But did opinions fly around in the media while the order was in place, as they are doing now?
If the suppression order's purpose was to suppress that, maybe it worked. |
|
|
|
|
stui magpie 
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
|
| Post subject: | |
|
^
@ David
Going off topic, is it a psychological condition or a sexual preference that conflicts with societies values?
paedophilia has a variety of types, from those attracted to babies, to pre-pubescent children, to post pubescent children who are below the age of consent.
It wasn't that long ago that being homosexual was classified as a mental illness, yet both homosexuality and pederasty have been around as long as recorded history and therefore likely longer.
_________________
Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down.
Last edited by stui magpie on Thu Feb 28, 2019 7:36 pm; edited 1 time in total |
|
|
|
|
Pies4shaw 
pies4shaw
Joined: 08 Oct 2007
|
|
|
|
|
David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
|
|
|
|
|
David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
|
| Post subject: | |
|
| stui magpie wrote: | ^
@ David
Going off topic, is it a psychological condition or a sexual preference that conflicts with societies values?
paedophilia has a variety of types, from those attracted to babies, to pre-pubescent children, to post pubescent children who are below the age of consent.
It wasn't that long ago that being homosexual was classified as a mental illness, yet both homosexuality and pederasty have been around as long as recorded history and therefore likely longer. |
It’s a tricky question and I’m not sure I’m really qualified to answer it, but my understanding of some mental illnesses is that they are by their very nature relative: that is to say, it’s arguable that we only think of schizophrenia as an illness because it is so different from "normal" mental functioning; and because, as such, it’s something that can seriously affect the ability of people with the condition to function in society, it needs to be diagnosed and treated. In a similar sense, most personality disorders aren’t curable illnesses so much as dispositions that tend to lead to antisocial behaviour.
Where paedophilia and its associated conditions (including hebephilia, which would be a more likely diagnosis of Pell if this act does indeed indicate his general sexual inclinations, which is not necessarily the case) fit into that nexus is, from my understanding, hotly debated in psychiatric circles. The DSM lists it as a paraphilia, but there are at least a minority of mental-health experts who think it’s not an illness but essentially just another sexual orientation like heterosexuality or homosexuality (albeit, one that can never be permitted to be acted on, for obvious reasons). But when we’re still in a situation where mainstream media and the general public use the term "paedophile" interchangeably with "child molester" and consider "paedophilia" a thing you do rather than a thing you have, I think it’s much simpler (and gets the point across more effectively) to describe paedophilia as a condition or illness. |
|
|
|
|
K
Joined: 09 Sep 2011
|
| Post subject: | |
|
^^^
| K wrote: | | ... And those are more unreliable than a jury's "criminal conviction". You won't get even six psychiatrists to "diagnose" the same thing, let alone twelve. ... |
|
|
|
|
|
K
Joined: 09 Sep 2011
|
| Post subject: | |
|
'Mary’s daughter believes The Kid had zero to gain from coming forward if he was not telling the truth.
“You would not put your family through that, you would not put a dead person’s name through that, you would not put yourself through that,” she says. “Because the emotional toll that would take on you for the rest of your life, knowing that people now know your circumstances, what’s happened to you in your personal life – you wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t true.
“I believe 100% in my heart what this young fella has come out and said, the allegations that he has made, I 100% support and believe that they are true, because the effects of coming out, they are devastating.” ' |
|
|
|
|
David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
|
| Post subject: | |
|
| K wrote: | ^^^
| K wrote: | | ... And those are more unreliable than a jury's "criminal conviction". You won't get even six psychiatrists to "diagnose" the same thing, let alone twelve. ... |
|
That may or may not be so, but do you think that means that attempts to codify such diagnoses are a waste of time? How else can we talk about such things?
_________________
All watched over by machines of loving grace |
|
|
|
|
K
Joined: 09 Sep 2011
|
| Post subject: | |
|
You mean psychiatric/psychological conditions in general?
Given they certainly exist, I think they certainly should be codified... |
|
|
|
|
K
Joined: 09 Sep 2011
|
| Post subject: | |
|
Judge's decision to bar 'Pac-Man' video in focus of Pell appeal bid
https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/judge-s-decision-to-bar-pac-man-video-in-focus-of-pell-appeal-bid-20190228-p510y7.html
"The judge's decision to bar the jury from watching a video will be one of three grounds on which lawyers for sex offender George Pell will appeal his conviction.
Lawyers will also claim there were issues with the way the jury of eight men and four women was selected and that they reached an "unreasonable" verdict based on the evidence presented.
The "unreasonable" verdict ground will be the main element of the appeal...
...
The video, which Pell’s legal team outsourced to producers, featured coloured dots moving in and outside the floor plan of the cathedral, each dot representing participants...
... prosecutors were worried jurors would subconsciously believe it was an accurate reconstruction and not a depiction.
...
... Judge Kidd ruled it wouldn’t be shown to the jury.
The evidence about people’s movements was fluid, he said, whereas the video showed where people were ‘‘with such specificity’’ it might be misleading. Where they were was a ‘‘quintessential question’’ for the jury." |
|
|
|
|
K
Joined: 09 Sep 2011
|
| Post subject: | |
|
^^^ My gut reaction is that if I were a juror I'd want to see the video, and if the prosecution thinks it's wrong they can explain why and produce their own competing video.
Wouldn't that be more consistent with the burden of proof being on the prosecution? |
|
|
|
|
think positive
Side By Side
Joined: 30 Jun 2005
Location: somewhere
|
| Post subject: | |
|
| K wrote: |
'Mary’s daughter believes The Kid had zero to gain from coming forward if he was not telling the truth.
“You would not put your family through that, you would not put a dead person’s name through that, you would not put yourself through that,” she says. “Because the emotional toll that would take on you for the rest of your life, knowing that people now know your circumstances, what’s happened to you in your personal life – you wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t true.
“I believe 100% in my heart what this young fella has come out and said, the allegations that he has made, I 100% support and believe that they are true, because the effects of coming out, they are devastating.” ' |
And this is it in a nutshell. Your thoughts on this David?
_________________
You cant fix stupid, turns out you cant quarantine it either! |
|
|
|
|
David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
|
| Post subject: | |
|
^ It’s very compelling, and a reminder of how easy it is to get caught up in the nitpicking of defence arguments (regarding, say, plausibility, times and dates and the construction of ceremonial garments) and to overlook the power of individual testimony. Certainly, it’s hard to believe that someone would make up and/or imagine a story and then go to the extent of reporting it to police, dragging a grieving family into it and having their claims tested in court if they didn’t sincerely believe it.
But therein lies both the value and problems of the principle of “believing the victims”: on the one hand, having people listen without prejudice is such an important step for sexual abuse victims, and in the vast majority of cases they are telling the truth – far more often than court verdicts would indicate, I’d wager. So, purely statistically, you won’t go too far wrong following that principle; indeed, you’ll be right far more often than you would be if you were in any way biased towards defendants. But on the other, our tendency to find the narratives we hear compelling (Pell doesn’t have a narrative, just a set of attempted alibis) can lead us to be too credulous, and to forget that, just as we find it implausible that someone would make up such a story and hold onto it through such a long period, it is also at least somewhat implausible to us that someone would commit a crime as brazen and senseless as what Pell has been convicted of – because we (one hopes) would never do either of those things. This is, ultimately, what we have courts for, because you just can’t base a functional criminal justice system on accepting everything you hear on face value.
There are, roughly speaking, two possible cases for the defence here, if they were seeking to not just demonstrate that sufficient doubt exists (the courtroom goal) but to find a compelling explanation for why there are other possible causes for the events described in the article than what the jury found, i.e. George Pell assaulting the two boys:
1) that they were abused, but not by Pell, and that some combination of trauma and the fallibilities of memory have caused the surviving victim to believe that it was Pell. I’m not a psychologist, so I’m not sure how commonplace a phenomenon like that is. But if it can happen, then it would be at least somewhat plausible in this case, given what we now know about the prevalence of abuse in the Catholic Church.
2) that the second victim was telling his mother the truth, and was never abused to begin with. We’re confronted in the article with a mystery (why did this boy go off the rails at the age of 13?) and a seemingly fitting resolution (he was abused). It’s a well-known observation that sexual abuse can have seriously damaging effects on child and adolescent development and lead to a higher likelihood of substance abuse and self-harm. But even in that schema, I would think that developing a heroin addiction at the age of 14 would be at the extreme end of the scale, which leads to the question: what other causal factors might there have been along the way? And once we consider those necessary steps (falling into the wrong crowd, etc.), how essential does the inciting incident remain as an explanation? Do more mundane factors start to become plausible?
I say none of this to discredit these people’s experiences, nor the testimony of the surviving victim. It’s a thin tightrope, the line between a doubt born of humility and a doubt born of suspicion, prejudice or incredulity. But I am a strong believer in the virtue of being able to honestly say "I don’t know". And that, I think, is still a valid sentiment regarding this case, even in the wake of the guilty verdict.
_________________
All watched over by machines of loving grace |
|
|
|
|
think positive
Side By Side
Joined: 30 Jun 2005
Location: somewhere
|
| Post subject: | |
|
Fair enough, good concise reply, thanks. From reading a coupe of really harrowing child abuse autobiographies being abused by one person seems to make a child more vulnerable to further abuse occurring. The heroin thing doesn’t surprise me at all. Adults will drug older kids to keep them in line.
Just remember though, only the jurors and those in the immediate need to be there have seen the video. How long ago was the first trial? Things are changing, it’s more, um, ok to speak out.
Just how compelling was the evidence to get a unanimous, or close to it, result? I’ll agree a couple may think like me, well maybe there is doubt but screw it he deserves it, but all of them?
On a side note how refreshing to have a decent and diverse discussion here without any abuse or ridicule! Cheers
_________________
You cant fix stupid, turns out you cant quarantine it either! |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
You cannot attach files in this forum
You cannot download files in this forum
|
|
The Rules
FAQ
Usergroups
Calendar
Search
Log in
Register
