AUSTRALIAN MEDIA ON TRIAL OVER CARDINAL PELL SEX ABUSE CASE

Mon 09 October 2020:

High-profile Australian journalists and large media organizations went on trial on Monday on charges that they breached a gag order on reporting about Cardinal George Pell’s sex abuse convictions in 2018 that have since been overturned.

Pell was convicted in December 2018 of abusing two choirboys but reporting on the trial and the conviction was gagged by the County Court of Victoria to ensure the cardinal received a fair trial on further charges he was due to face.

Prosecutors in the state of Victoria have charged 10 journalists, five newspaper editors, four online publications and 12 media companies, mainly owned by News Corp and Nine Entertainment and its Fairfax arm, with breaching the suppression order.

The suppression order was only lifted in February 2019, after the second trial was dropped. Pell’s conviction was overturned earlier this year after he served over a year in jail.

She said, however, emails between reporters and editors showed they were aware of the order.

One editor at The Age said in an email read out in court: “Regarding the suppressed case, I am totally against publishing this story today, as I have said earlier.”

“We are not breaching the suppression order, just explaining why we can’t report on the story,” he said in an email.

The trial, being run online due to Covid-19 restrictions, is scheduled to last up to 15 days. None of the defendants were in court on Monday.

Breaches of suppression orders can be punished with up to five years jail and fines of nearly A$100 000 for individuals and nearly A$500 000 for companies.

The trial of Pope Francis’ former finance minister and the most senior Catholic to be charged with child sex abuse was not reported in the news media because of a suppression order that forbade publication of details in any format that could be accessed from Australia.

Details were suppressed to prevent prejudicing jurors in a second child abuse trial that Pell was to face three months later.

That second trial was canceled due to a lack of evidence, and Australia’s High Court in April overturned all convictions after Pell had spent 13 months in prison.

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