One of the nation’s leading authorities on criminal law has accused ABC journalist Louise Milligan of repeatedly ignoring facts about the prosecution of the late Cardinal George Pell that do not support her views.
Jeremy Gans, who teaches criminal law at the University of Melbourne, believes an article written by Milligan about Pell risks misleading readers about the law and aspects of the case.
“It’s a recurrent problem with Milligan’s journalism. If there are facts that don’t help her argument, she doesn’t tell readers, she just leaves them out,” Professor Gans said.
Milligan, who won a Walkley award for a book on Pell, did not respond to Professor Gans.
His critique of her journalism was triggered by an article in The Saturday Paper of January 14, three days after the cardinal’s death, in which Milligan wrote about “The child abuse cases in which George Pell was never tried”.
In a series tweets the same day, Professor Gans pointed to inconsistencies between Milligan’s article and a 2019 judgment in the Pell case by Chief Judge Peter Kidd of Victoria’s County Court.
Professor Gans wrote that Milligan “leaves out all the key bits of Kidd’s reasoning” when the judge determined that multiple complaints against Pell should not be heard together.
“The main point is that two of the three accounts couldn’t establish anything criminal or even improper, and effectively added nothing to the one clear account,” Professor Gans wrote.
Pell spent 405 days in prison after being convicted of child sex offences before the High Court unanimously overturned his convictions in April 2020.
Milligan wrote that she had interviewed two men in 2016 and “both said Pell abused them at the Eureka pool in the 1970s”.
Professor Gans noted that according to the Kidd judgment, “only one of the two pool complainants said that. The other one described one fleeting touch that he and the DPP conceded may have been accidental”.
He wrote that none of this “disproves Pell’s guilt or Milligan’s case that he’s a terrible man” but the omission of certain material was frustrating “because she risks misleading readers on a controversial part of the law, on tendency and coincidence evidence”.
That body of law would readily have allowed all those complaints to be heard together “had two or more been even close to solid,” Professor Gans wrote.
Milligan’s article also referred to accusations of sexual assault at Melbourne’s St Patrick’s Cathedral that concerned a boy who subsequently died.
Professor Gans wrote: “She says, of the deceased boy: ‘The boy, like so many others, never told.’ And describes his parents as perplexed and seeking help, etc.
“But she leaves out that the boy expressly denied any abuse. Again, this doesn’t disprove Pell’s guilt. It’s easy to imagine reasons why the boy would falsely deny being abused.
“What’s harder to understand is why Milligan wouldn’t mention this bit – which was strongly relied on by Pell.
“The same is of course true of her summary of the outcome of the trial and appeals.”
He quotes Milligan as writing: “Years later, this testimony led to conviction by a jury, which was also upheld by the Victorian Court of Appeal. The High Court later acquitted Pell.”
Professor Gans writes that this was “all true but a different jury [was] hung, the Court of Appeal decision was close and the High Court was unanimous”.
“Everyone knows that, of course, but do they know that the High Court found the prosecution didn’t challenge evidence that simply left no time for Pell to do the crimes alleged?
“I’ve never seen how Milligan explains the timing argument.
“Does she think the High Court misunderstood the evidence? Or that the law that requires the DPP to challenge contrary witnesses is a bad law? Or does she just not want to discuss this issue,” he wrote.
