The MeToo brigade were, sadly, not done with the vicious pursuit of Cardinal Pell. A year on, they are back for another Christian. Guilt by accusation, admittedly dished out with ideological selectivity, is in season again. Destroy. Destroy. Destroy. A version of this article appeared in The Spectator Australia of 13 March 2021.
Following the unanimous exoneration of Cardinal George Pell by the High Court of Australia in April last year, there was a glimmer of hope that the huntress-in-chief of Pell, the fembot Louise Milligan, would back off for a while, would meekly retreat, perhaps even show some remorse. To have been so humiliated legally after her defamatory crusade against the Cardinal, common sense would suggest, and humility would demand, that discretion must become the better part of valour.
But no, it wasn’t to be.
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s slayer of sex abusers real and imagined did not apologise to the Cardinal for leading the charge to ruin his life and reputation. She didn’t bother to change the title of her first book (The Rise and Fall of George Pell) which, according to one less-than-kind observer, amounted to nothing more than “semi-literate police talking points”, a litany of wild (and easily dismissed) accusations mostly from career criminals, and a character reference for Pell’s primary accuser who now would appear to be a fantasist at best. No, Milligan instead wrote another book designed to show HER to be a victim – of the legal system – and to wring some more copy from the Pell trials. And now, of course, she is back on the case, apparently determined to destroy the career and reputation of a different Christian, again, through a media pile-on.
The High Court’s verdict in the Pell matter appeared to serve as a serious correction to the gathering momentum of MeTooist guilt-by-accusation trials, either in the courts or in the media. Team “we believe you” had collected many scalps, large and small, and had built an impressive record of destroying careers and reputations. A moral panic about child sex abuse led to a nearly half-billion-dollar Royal Commission whose raison-d’etre would appear, in retrospect, to have been simply to get the Catholic Church.
Just about everyone was on board. Whole legal and law enforcement systems were “reformed” in order to embed MeTooist conceptions of the law. Woke police were trained in the new thinking. Always believe the complainant. Law reform bodies made recommendations that led governments to, in effect, reverse the onus of proof in historical sex cases. MeTooist true believers and thought leaders were strategically placed in justice bureaucracies to ensure that the implementation of the new ideology went smoothly. Priest-chasing lawyers have become an industry. Senior politicians, with an eye ever on the optics and determined to be on-trend, chanted apologies in the national parliament and attempted to outdo one another in claiming the MeTooist high ground. Now one of their own is himself caught in the crossfire.
These verdicts show that, despite all the bluster and all the power of the witch-hunters, there remains something called the rule of law, however imperfectly it may sometimes be implemented.
Fortunately for the justice system in Australia and elsewhere, there has been considerable pushback by those against whom the accusations of impropriety appeared on their face to be extremely dodgy. And some dramatic vindications of the innocent. Besides Pell, there was Geoffrey Rush. And Craig McLachlan. And in the USA, the famous lawyer Alan Dershowitz, who even wrote a book titled Guilt by Accusation. Nor should be forget Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s survival of the MeTooist blowtorch to advance triumphantly to the Supreme Court of the United States. Perhaps the biggest slap in the face of all was the Carl Beech fiasco in the United Kingdom, where a paedophile-fantasist was able to con two police forces – and many others – that a bizarre tale of sex abuse mayhem and murder had occurred in high places. The exposure of Beech as a liar and his eventual incarceration amounted to nothing short of a humiliation for those who fed the lie, and who believed it. Again, it was all too late to save the reputations of those cruelly hounded, including one senior figure who died in disgrace. Oops. On reflection, we actually shouldn’t always believe the accuser.
Not all cases go well for the accused innocents. It took George Pell four goes and the timely intervention of a judge actually cognisant of the principles of criminal law (Justice Mark Weinberg) to provide him with a clear pathway to obtaining justice. Other innocents, like the Catholic priest Father John Fleming of South Australia, are still battling to clear their names, in the face of trial-by-media, of vile accusations perpetrated by those with agendas who choose to publish allegations based on the flimsiest of evidence, and of bungled judicial process.
https://thefreedomsproject.com/item/522-the-crucifixion-of-john-fleming
And so we come to Christian Porter.
Another vilified Christian. A man who is stuck, and may be stuck forever, between a rock and a hard place, since the allegations against him, sprayed all over town by a fembot cabal, can never be tested in a court of law. His accuser has died. The police have said there is no case to answer. There is no question of evidence being to hand in the absence of the accuser, who requested, in the end, that police not pursue the matter. Christian Porter has no pathway whatsoever to clearing his name. On the other hand, his opponents have all the weapons they need to continue their vile pursuit. They have fembot apparatchiks in the Senate, primed to use every device available to keep the issue alive. They have the Opposition Leader, ready cynically to use his position to destroy an opponent and strangely silent about an historic, unresolved rape allegation against one of his own (Bill Shorten). They have the baying mob on social media. They have the “fit and proper person” card that has already been played ad nauseum. It is not remotely clear why anyone accused, absent compelling evidence, of doing something wrong, even something heinous, should be thought not fit and proper. This phrase, as it is currently bandied about, has taken on a sort of moral weight that it does not deserve. Yet suddenly every pet shop galah is shouting it.
The determined and vindictive accusers of Porter have, as well, that MeTooist megaphone otherwise known as the ABC. Fresh from its disgraceful pursuit of Pell, and failing to accept a skerrick of responsibility for what occurred there, it has dusted itself off and sharpened its claws, poised and ready to destroy a fresh target.
Then there is the ultimate weapon in the fembots’ armoury. They know that, especially in the current climate of (coincidental and totally unrelated) Parliament House accusations of rape, there are ways other than through the law of destroying a man. The MeTooists prey upon the utter fear that third parties have of being thought protective of, or in any way sympathetic to, sex offenders. So, for example, they punish the target by turning the mob against the target’s employer. The National Rugby League deemed the footballer Jack de Bellin, also accused of rape, not a fit and proper person to be allowed to work in their employ. Irrespective of, and prior to, a trial. Game over.
Like many of the other targets, this Christian, given of who and what he is, is a marked man. The fembots especially like to go after powerful men, those on the right, particularly those destined for higher things, conservatives, Catholics and those who are, like Pell, seen as enemies of feminism and of progressive politics. The two Bills, Clinton and Shorten, naturally, were spared fembot scrutiny. As was Joe Biden. Oh no, they NEVER go after their own.
And, according to the initial ABC’s Four Corners Program on parliamentary shenanigans – Milligan again – Porter has form in relation to “inappropriate” behaviour with female staff. This conveniently serves to suggest, just as they did with Pell, a pattern of behaviour, aka tendency evidence, to strengthen their main case. Very clever, indeed. And they called on one Malcolm “bonk-ban” Turnbull as a witness, to boot. Luckily Malcolm was on hand to assist.
Little wonder the Attorney-General needs time off. Porter will need all the strength he can muster. And we can be sure that, as night follows day, Louise Milligan will be there, battle armour on, shamelessly leading the charge as she tweets away, strategically and with spittle-flecked invective, demanding MeToo justice.
The military strategist Carl Von Clausewitz once argued, famously, that war was merely politics by other means. Similarly, and you can take this from the targets of fembot attacks, an accusation of sexual assault is simply cancel culture by other means.
