by PAUL COLLITS – I SPENT several years writing over fifty thousand words defending the late George Pell against his accusers.
My argument assumed that we shouldn’t automatically believe the actual accuser, Witness JJ. Go on, you all want me to say his name. Nope, not today.
- Carl Beech was talking total bullshit – he, himself, was a child abuser.
- Now we have reached the heights of turbo-charged paedophile-phobia.
- It has taken on the shape and depth of a Left-wing quasi-religious belief.
Daniel Andrews – possibly dying, now – said, even after the 2020 High Court verdict exonerating Pell had been delivered, “we believe you”.
We were caught in a me-too moment. And a moral panic. Then, about paedophile priests. And it is all happening again.
CRAZY
We now inhabit the crazy days of the late Epstein, where the real problems of the world have been parked – notwithstanding World War III blues and Iran – as the whole globe focuses on a sordid tale of powerful, elite, networked lotharios.
Today’s moral panic 2.0, might be reduced to a tale of four accusers: Carl Beech, Witness JJ, the late Virginia Giuffre and Kathy Sherriff.
(Yes, there are many accusers of Epstein that have emerged, but, it will be argued, the current global obsession largely rests on the accusations of Giuffre, and on the efforts of a Floridan journalist called Julie Knipe Brown.)
Oh, and there is also one non-accuser, Ashley Davis.
Ashley who? Well, Ashley was the reason that Jeffrey Epstein was jailed in Florida in 2008.
A convicted paedophile? Err, no. He was convicted of soliciting a prostitute. He paid Ashley for the legendary Epstein “massages”.
The specific incident for which he was convicted occurred one day before Ashley’s 18th birthday.
In most US States, she wouldn’t have been “under aged”.
Yes, there were other girls, often not engaged in sex acts. Oh, and they lied about their ages. They wanted to do it, they kept coming back, they were paid, they received and none of them filed complaints.
For the full story on Epstein’s one and only conviction, see Michael Tracey’s podcast.
As always, with me-too events, we rely on the veracity of those making sweeping accusations, and on the robustness of the judicial system(s).
So, we come to the aforementioned complainants. Carl Beech was (coincidentally) released in Britain the other week, years short of serving his full sentence for perjury and other crimes.
ELITE RING
He was a fantasist who pretended to be a victim of an elite ring of celebrities, politicians and the like. He smeared many, both alive and dead. It was Operation Midland.
He was talking total bullshit – he, himself, was a child abuser.
If ever we were to be believe a complainant, it sure wouldn’t have been Pell’s Witness JJ. He, and it, were crocs, with many of the fantasist elements observed with Carl Beech.
Both were widely believed, because people wanted to believe that the Church (especially), other public institutions and the world in general are run by paedophile.
Now we have reached the heights of turbo-charged paedophile-phobia. It has taken on the shape and depth of a quasi-religious belief.
The Team Get Pell, of course, was impressive in its breadth – the ABC, Melbourne University Press, VicPol, the Victorian judiciary, the Victorian Premier, victims’ groups, priest chasing lawyers – and they drove it all the way to the High Court. Where they got smashed.
Pretty well silence since from them, despite a smattering of protesters outside George Pell’s funeral Mass at St Mary’s Cathedral in Sydney.
Then Labor leader Bill Shorten was among those caught up in the hysteria of the McClelland Royal Commission into institutional child sex abuse.
We-the-taxpayer spent around $400m on getting the Catholic Church. But Bill had his own backstory in these matters, ironically, and his own accuser.
Perhaps we should believe the Bill Shorten accuser. Who knows? Bill was, as they say, “credibly accused” of the rape of a 16-year-old girl called Kathy Sherriff. Check out her website.
Bill has always been in the clear. He stood up in the House of Representatives in the wake of the Royal Commission and enjoined us all to “believe” all women. Not Kathy, clearly.
He is now Vice Chancellor of the University of Canberra. Is Kathy a fantasist herself? I have no idea.
Christian Porter, accused of the same crime, had his political career destroyed by the sisterhood. Bill Clinton survived, too, against the odds, then and possibly still now.
PATTERN
Feminists supported him. Are you spotting the pattern, here?
Finally, there is Virginia Giuffre. Widely believed. A star witness in the ongoing Epstein saga. See her book.
Recently deceased, under circumstances that have been questioned, Guiffre is the main reason that Epstein was brought to justice, second time around, in 2019. Well, brought to prison.
He was never tried, at least in the conventional way. You can’t try a dead man. Nor can he claim the traditional right to innocence until proven otherwise.
Giuffre’s credibility has been questioned. Seriously questioned. Like Sherriff’s. Like Beech’s. And Witness JJ’s.
Pell’s accuser had a committed cheer squad. It took the High Court to knock JJ out of the park.
Like Carl Beech, Giuffre accused many, many people of sordid crimes. Like Alan Dershowitz. She later retracted much of what she had earlier alleged.
If even partly true, her life story was a tragedy.
But…
Yes, there is certainly a moral panic afoot. Just turn on the news or go through your YouTube feed. It is wall to wall Epstein, Maxwell and the Andrew formerly known as Prince.
But perhaps the moral panic is selectively applied. The degree of “we believe you” is directly proportional, it seems, to the identity and ideological positioning of the accused.
In the case of Pell, we were told to simply believe JJ.
Well, we didn’t all take the bait. I didn’t, Gerard Henderson didn’t and the late Keith Windschuttle didn’t. Despite all our efforts, it nearly didn’t work out. The accuser and his many Leftist allies were all full of shit.
Yes, there has been a tsunami of accusations from alleged victims who have generally done very well financially from “settlements”. With over $600 million dollars’ worth of settlements. And endlessly growing.
Moral panic can be politically convenient – and profitable.PC
