Groans amid the laughter
Or is it laughter amid the groans?
Last night my father, myself, my sister and a friend went to hear Geoffrey Robertson expound on why Australia needs a Bill of Rights. Not surprisingly, he was impressively convincing (though I did wish for a Hypothetical on the topic), but it was the supper conversation that prompted groans and laughter, both at the time and in the reminder that popped into my head for something I’d meant to follow up on.
As usual, when my sister, father and I get together, the conversation leaps from one varied topic to another, broken by interspersed explanations to Dad, who’s missed hearing some significant punchline due to his obstinate refusal to wear his hearing aids, or emphatic point-making to Dad, whose general socio-political stance is far to the right of ours. Again not unusually, clergy abuse and church hierarchy stupidity in general formed a part of the conversation. Roberston’s reference to George Pell’s inane argument against a bill of rights (“it hasn’t worked in Zimbabwe”) perhaps put church inanities in our minds, but I also mentioned the pope’s recent effort on washing machines and the liberation of women. Jaqi, in the midst of her frenetic life and recent forced dietary headshift, had missed that spicy piece of news, and nearly choked on her supper at the ludicrousness of the pope knowing anything about the liberation of women. And I don’t want to simply repeat Jac’s own blog comment, but we did agree on a conclusion that is worth putting up on the Net in more than one place: that the pope had a point – but only with regard to women who aren’t allowed to use the Pill. First groan.
The second arose from the memory – an irrelevancy to the topics over supper, but something I’d meant to do – that I had on my agenda to read through the transcript of Marcus Einfeld’s recent Four Corners interview, to find out just how he thought he could explain those lies he told. I couldn’t bear to sit through the actual broadcast, but thanks to Aunty’s obliging habit of posting transcripts, I could read the show later. And I found roughly what I had expected to find: a Hollingworth-esque (though somewhat more intelligently offered) self-justification full of holes. Einfeld’s “frank admission” that he simply did the wrong thing, and he’s sorry, doesn’t quite mesh with these statements from the transcript:
1) “Look I don’t want to commit myself, to commit another crime by admitting to something here, but I’m trying to be as honest as I can be so, Let’s put it this way, I, I, um, I must’ve had doubts about it [that he had lent his car to a dead friend].” Oh, so there’s another crime you haven’t been charged/convicted with here, Mr Einfeld? And your remorse doesn’t quite extend to putting your hands up to that as well?
2) “It was [a straight out lie]. And it’s, probably more shameful in a way than the driving.” Only probably, Mr Einfeld? As a judge, one would have thought that there would be no question that lying under oath is more shameful than driving 10kmh over the speed limit. As you’ve found out (but should have known anyway), the first garners you a 2-year jail term, the second merely a $77 fine.
3) On being asked wasn’t it rather tawdry to use the name of someone he admired in a perjurous statement: “I didn’t do a tawdry act. I ah, did something that I can’t explain.” Well, no. If you don’t admit that it was just cheap and nasty, then it’s hard to come up with any reason for a judge to do what he did.
4) “Ha. The joke about that is that I did know another person by the same name and I did meet her in Bangladesh, but she wasn’t the person driving the car.” Do tell me, Mr Einfeld, in what way it’s a joke that you tried to wriggle out of your lies when caught out – by telling another lie?
5) “Obviously the lie on oath is the, is the critical one as far as the law is concerned. But I treat it [all the lies told] all in the same category because I told a lie, I had opportunities to get out of it and I didn’t take them.” But you don’t put them all in the same category, Mr Einfeld, because only 30 seconds earlier, you said “That, that was a lie, but you know that was a lie to a journalist, I, I didn’t quite feel the same obligation [to tell the truth as I should under oath], if you don’t mind my saying so.”
6) “If you mean that I told more lies, um I don’t think so. Nothing of any significance anyway. I mean it would have only been follow up, the necessary follow up from what I’d said. … I possibly embellished the story with more detail but I, I don’t really think I made any significant change, no.” No, no significant change, Mr Einfeld, apart from managing to get two women to make supporting claims that they were in the car, with a dead woman, when it was caught on camera.
7) On being quizzed about the police implication that Einfeld had done the same thing (submitted stat decs saying he wasn’t driving) on several occasions before to avoid speeding fines, he said “I never lie in statutory declarations if I can conceivably have any hope of it being true. I never tell untruths.” So…what exactly was it, Mr Einfeld, if it wasn’t a lie (and given that you’ve already said it was a lie)? And did you notice the qualification – I never lie in stat decs if. Ok, we get it. You never lie unless there’s a chance of getting away with it.
8] Answering the challenge that he’d done it before, on at least three occasions, and that it was a pattern, he said “Yes but that’s nonsense. Why would you name people who you, who actually existed? You can name people who don’t exist.” Well, Mr Einfeld, not only have you clearly done it this time, so why not those other times, but it’s nice of you to show us the way your mind works. Not “it’s unthinkable to do it”, but “here’s a much more plausible way of getting away with it”.
9) “No it’s not a lot of mistakes, I’m sorry. There were three events plus this one. I’ve admitted to this one. If I’d been called upon to meet the others I might have admitted to one of those when I’d got the facts and I’d checked up on them. …I don’t think you can accuse me of not being frank because I can’t remember the details.” But the details have been put in front of you, Mr Einfeld, you don’t have to remember them. You signed stat decs saying these people were driving your car when it was caught speeding, and in each case they were overseas (or dead) at the time. No ifs or buts. It’s not down to your memory now, and it wasn’t when you signed those stat decs. (Einfeld pleaded guilty in order to avoid those other incidents being raised in court.)
And it all came out by a mere fluke (though at least a predictable one) – the idle curiosity of a journalist. There are distinct similarities here with the unfolding of the Boston clergy sexual abuse scandal in 2002, which grew from one small journalistic question to 11,000 pages of internal church documents and several awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for public service,* for the journalistic team that uncovered the church’s lies. In Einfeld’s case, a journalist on a slow news day wondered who is Teresa Brennan, did a web search, and found she died three years before Einfeld claimed she did.
And as I read the transcript, it all had a wearying sameness to me. Einfeld, Hollingworth, Pell, the pope… the pattern of lies, cover-up, being forced to confront their lies publicly, and a simultaneous attempt to avoid responsibility while seeking to claim honesty and remorse. None of which is to say they haven’t each done some good things. But life isn’t as simple as saying “he’s done X good things, and Y bad things, and the number of good ones outweigh the bad, so he’s really a good person and shouldn’t suffer the normal penalty for this crime”. The truer view is that people are a mix of good and bad, and the more they promote the good and conceal the bad, the greater compartmentalism there is in their lives and the greater unreality they come to live in. Einfeld’s actions here demonstrate a wilful intent to go against all his judicial career stands for, and he still won’t just say “yes, I told a tissue of lies, I convinced other people to tell lies for me, I sustained it over quite a long period of time, including after it was first uncovered, I only admitted it when I had no choice, and I deserve all I get”. So, second groan.
But wait, there’s more… (do I hear you groaning?)
Einfeld, of course, as a judge, should have known better. But at least his career doesn’t rest on claiming the moral high ground. His job is to administer the law (which is codified morality), not to define it. Church hierarchy, on the other hand… which musing brings me to my third groan: I’ve been looking at just how many convicted clergy abusers may well still be in active or semi-active ministry. Certainly very few are defrocked (see the perpetrator list section of my website for explanation on the difference between licence [aka faculties] being revoked – which is temporary, or defrocking – which is permanent). And I’d like to see a church which actually believed that a conviction for child sex offences resulted in automatic defrocking, but not even the Uniting Church (perhaps the best of the lot in terms of policies) does. But if one were to place articles 3 and 30 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (“Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.”[emphasis mine] and “Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein” side by side, one might interpret that as saying that the church is acting contrary to human rights principles when it reinstates convicted child sex offenders into the priesthood, thereby implying their good ability to uphold the “security of person” to which their congregants are entitled.
Which takes us back to Robertson. Robertson’s premise is that a Charter of Rights would provide an informed platform from which to argue for rights-based treatment of any application of law. So if a judge, for instance, made a decision that was contrary to the principles of the Charter, it could be pointed out to him, and change requested. And that, over time, people would come to expect that decisions informed by rights principles would be the norm. And as he detailed rights achievements over the centuries, he quoted the Magna Carta: “We will sell to no man, we will not deny or defer to any man either Justice or Right”. A basic human right, understood for 800 years, which is regularly ignored by the churches in dealing with clergy abuse victims. But if history can repeat itself, with systematic abuses of power causing the common people to force the authority figure to bow to their insistence on their rights, perhaps there is still hope that clergy abuse victims could receive better treatment from the churches.
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Footnote:
* The other awards were: the Associated Press Managing Editors’ Freedom of Information Award, the Goldsmith Prize for investigative reporting, the George Polk Award for national reporting, a medal from Investigative Reporters and Editors, the Selden Ring Award for investigative reporting, the Sigma Delta Chi award for excellence in investigative journalism from the Society of Professional Journalists, the Taylor Family Award for fairness in newspapers, the Worth Bingham Award for investigative reporting, the New York Times Company’s Punch Sulzberger Award, a media award from the Massachusetts Association for the Treatment of Sex Abusers, and the Spirit Award for Media Responsibility from Jane Doe Inc., a Massachusetts coalition against sexual assault and domestic violence.
April 2nd, 2009 at 8:59 pm
It’s kind of puzzling about Einfeld – the whole sordid saga is detailed on his Wikipedia entry along, of course, with the details of his career as a distinguished fighter for human rights (one-time president of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission, named a National Living Treasure, etc). But I just don’t get it. Why would a retired Supreme Court judge do something as silly as lie on oath again and again to avoid a $77 fine? He wasn’t even going to lose his licence, although he would’ve only had one point remaining. But something doesn’t add up. I can’t help wondering if he might have, you know, a cocaine addiction or something – something to cause him to lose his sense of perspective and save his pennies in all the wrong ways. There was also the collapse of Australian Legal Resources International, of which he was president, but presumably that’s all been properly investigated and so on. Still, I feel we haven’t seen the real cause behind his actions, and wonder whether it will come out while he’s in jail.
There’s an interesting article on the news site WA Today discussing his attitude in psychological terms and referring to compartmentalisation – so common among clergy abusers.
Which reminds me – I think we should start a campaign, a nice quiet little thing that can simmer along getting the odd signature here and there from victims and their supporters until some high profile case gives it wings. A campaign to make it illegal for churches to employ convicted child sex offenders as priests. No use trying to get the churches to do it off their own bats – make it law.
April 2nd, 2009 at 9:27 pm
Well, technically it sort of is. Illegal, that is. The Working With Children legislation (see http://www.kids.nsw.gov.au) makes it an offence to employ a convicted child sex offender in a position working with children (and, incidentally, the legislation also covers those who have been the subject of an investigation, even a workplace one rather than a criminal one). But there are three main problems with it:
1) It requires the offender to be honest when filling out the declaration to say they’re not an offender.
2) It requires the employer to be diligent about doing the necessary checks (applicants for paid work must have their declaration checked, applicants for volunteer positions only need to sign the declaration – it doesn’t have to be followed up).
3) With regard to the church, it depends what you mean by “employed as a priest”. If you mean, in a parish, then that’s covered by the WWC legislation. But there are many other ways a priest can be employed – in admin, in chaplaincy work (hospitals, schools, retirement homes, etc), and in a range of ministries, some of which are voluntary and some paid. So the borderline of a) what needs to be checked, and b) what constitutes working with children, can be pretty hazy when it comes to clergy. Moreover, if the perpetrator is opportunistic rather than focused (ie. he doesn’t care what/who his victims are so long as they’re available), it may not be enough to switch him to hospital chaplaincy or work with people in special care. They’re not kids, but they’re still vulnerable.
To me, the significant thing is not removing a perp from opportunities to abuse (it’s impossible), it’s the church saying “this guy is no longer one whom we endorse as being worthy of the title Reverend”. Until they’re prepared to do that, it will continue to appear as though the church supports their abusive actions, or at least doesn’t think it’s a terribly heinous contravention of their ordained status.
April 6th, 2009 at 10:45 pm
If it’s an offence to employ a convicted child sex offender in a position working with children, who should be prosecuting the various churches/parishes/schools/etc who are doing so? I bet if more of them were done for it they’d think twice about doing it.
April 7th, 2009 at 1:17 pm
I’m not sure actually whose responsibility it is (wouldn’t be hard to find out, but I can’t be bothered looking it up right now, being in the throes of rearranging my personal space). I’d guess it comes down to the WWC people pressuring the church to remove a guy. But the legislation has a lot of grey areas – for instance, recently I investigated the situation with regard to a community musical society which often has children in the cast. But because the activity wasn’t primarily working with children, the WWC office advised that the society wasn’t required to abide by the WWC rules. Parish ministry might well come under the same grey area (never mind whether we think it should or not) in the sense that the WWC decision might be that a priest’s primary ministry in his parish is to adults, not children. The same could apply with something like hospital chaplaincy.
I’d imagine (whisper here) that the church has enough behind-the-scenes clout to force the WWC office to “not notice”, anyway.