A "witness" - to what exactly, yes, he was a junior priest, when the events now being discussed are said to have taken place, to expect him to know any more than any other junior, in any other organisation is a romance! IF, he's shown to be not telling what he believes, decades later, to be an accurate recollection of events - show it, what is absolutely unacceptable, is for people to infer it to be so!
Show, where Pell has, knowingly, deflected, protected or shielded any criminal from any activity?
your point re "It is disingenuous of his apologists to start now to deflect this importance to other...." is a total nonsense statement and evidences your own clear lack of knowledge of the real issue of "child abuse" - every serious study undertaken around the world on the subject matter evidences a couple of KEY points here:
1) the Roman Catholic Church rates LOW on the list of abuse offenders - lower than the secular community around it, lower in FACT, than other Christian communities, this is NOT to imply abuse has, sadly, not occurred or attack other religious communities, it simply puts FACT in stark contrast to nonsense driven media campaigns!
2) incidents of child abuse, in the secular worldwide, tragically and massively, out number those in religious communities:
See, as just SOME factual data, the few examples below, are from North America, which is generally seen as the "typical example" of this type of thing in Western nations, also obviously, the United States is where a lot more capacity exists to perform such research and I don't believe human nature "magically" changes when you enter the Southern Hemisphere:
Jenkins, P., Pedophiles and Priests [Oxford, 2001]
Clayton, M., Christian Science Monitor [Apr, 2002]
Thomas, C., Baltimore Sun [19 June, 2002]
Two respected liberal newspapers in the US, The Washington Post [TWP] and New York Times [NYT], neither being known for their "pro Catholic" positions, estimates that since the mid 1960's - less than 1.5% of the 60,000 Catholic Priest, in the USA have been accused of sexual misconduct [TWP] and between 1950 and 2001 only 1.8% of Catholic Priests have ever faced any abuse related charges.
Sure, you could, in theory, argue, some clergy may have abused and simply "got away with it", but seriously, to suggest even those numbers, would materially change these published facts, figures that are well below national averages, is simply laughable.
Balance these figures, against data from the American Medical Association, which found in the mid 1980's that...wait for it.... one in four girls and one in eight boys had been, in or out of school, a victim of sexual abuse, by the age of 18! Further, in New York City ALONE, every day, one child is abused by a school employee.....that's every day!
Re Prof Charol Shakeshaft, Hofstra University, who conducted a study of 225 cases of NYC related abuse, found all of the accused admitted guilt, however not one of them were reported to authorities and only 1% lost their teachers license! So much for the Roman Catholic Church being the only body caught being clueless on how to deal with such an issue!
I hope this data causes one to stop and think and finally accept, where there is smoke, there may well indeed be fire. All kids deserve a serious effort at addressing a community wide issue!
