Pretty sure the decision by Pell's crack legal team to go with a jury and to not take the stand was well discussed around March in this thread.

11:03 AM PDT 4/30/2019 by Scott Roxborough

German-French channel Arte says it will fight to overturn a court injunction that prevents it from rebroadcasting the documentary, which accuses rogue priests of sexually abusing French nuns.

A French television documentary that accuses Catholic priests of sexually abusing nuns has been pulled from the French-German television channel Arte after a priest filed a complaint with a German court.

French director Marie-Pierre Raimbault and investigative journalist Eric Quintin shot the documentary, Sex Slaves in the Catholic Church, over three years, basing it on first hand testimony of nuns who claim they were used as “sex slaves” by priests. The women say when they presented their allegations to church authorities at the Vatican, they were ignored and often moved elsewhere in a cover-up that stretched across four continents.

Arte first aired the film in March. Some 1.5 million French viewers caught the original broadcast, with a further 1.7 million watching on replay, making it the most-watched documentary of the year for the channel. The film has sold worldwide.

In November, the organization representing all the world’s female Catholic religious orders, the International Union of Superiors General, denounced the “culture of silence and secrecy” that prevented nuns from speaking out and urged sisters to report abuse to their superiors and police.

The Vatican's women's magazine, Women Church World, has reported that some nuns had been forced to abort the priests’ unwanted children.

Arte was forced to pull Sex Slaves in the Catholic Church from its online site earlier this month after a court in Hamburg, Germany, slapped a temporary injunction on the film following a complaint filed by a priest. The court said the priest said, while he was not shown in the documentary, he was "recognizable" from an interview given by a nun. In the interview, the complaint reads, the nuns “gave the impression that the priest had forced a nun into sex against her will.” The priest was not identified in publication of the complaint.

“For both formal and factual reasons, Arte considers this decision to be wrong and we have therefore decided to appeal,” a channel spokeswoman said in a statement.

For the time being, Arte is keeping the documentary off its replay site. Violations of the injunction carry a possible fine of up to $280,000 and jail time of up to two years.

Another film criticizing abuse by the Catholic Church — Francois Ozon's Berlin Silver Bear winner By the Grace of God — had to battle two separate legal challenges that sought to block its release.

The film, largely inspired by the real-life case of Father Bernard Preynat, a French priest indicted two years ago for sexual assault and accused of molesting more than 80 boys, faced legal injunctions filed by both Preynat and former church volunteer Regine Maire, who sought to block its release in France. But the French courts threw out both cases and the film bowed in France on Feb. 20.

By James Oaten   Posted yesterday at 4:38pm

PHOTO: Victorian MP Paul Edbrooke (right) read out a letter his father Nick (left) received. (ABC News: Supplied)

"It certainly takes a man detached from all logic and reality to go on radio and sell our community this rubbish," Mr Edbrooke told Parliament.

"But it certainly takes an even stupider one to expect people to believe it.

"What an insult to our community and our survivors."

Mr Edbrooke started his speech saying his father, Nick Edbrooke, had "his innocence torn away" at the age of 15 after arriving in Melbourne in the late 1960s.

He then read from a letter that his father, now aged 64, received from the church a month ago, which revealed further details of the abuse.

He did not reveal who wrote the letter.

An extract of the letter said:

"Dear Nick,

I thank you for allowing me this important opportunity to express extreme regret for what happened to you. I've read your detailed account of the night you were … raped.

You spoke of how you stayed face down in the bed of your room too afraid to move, and then how you ran out of that place as soon as you could, leaving your possessions there."

The letter revealed Mr Edbrooke's father walked around the city in a "daze" and attempted suicide.

He was admitted to hospital but later transferred to a psychiatric hospital.

The letter continued:

"Every child deserves to be safe, to be loved and cared for.

I'm so sorry this was not your experience.

We humbly ask for your forgiveness."

Church 'closing ranks with the boys'

Mr Edbrooke said his father supported the letter being read out in Parliament if it helped pass legislation that would force all religious leaders to report information about child abuse, even if obtained during confession.

On the day the legislation was introduced to Parliament, Archbishop Comensoli told the ABC that he would rather go to jail than break the confessional seal.

The Archbishop also said he believed Pell was the victim of mistaken identity, after the Cardinal's six-year jail sentence for sexually abusing two choirboys was upheld by the Victorian Court of Appeal.

Mr Edbrooke told the Parliament the church's defence of Pell was "astonishing".

"By falling in line, closing ranks with the boys, Comensoli has utterly failed the leadership test," Mr Edbrooke said.

"If Jesus was here now, he'd be the first, the very first to report child abuse without exception and without exemption."

Archbishop Comensoli's representatives declined to comment.

Earlier in the day, Attorney-General Jill Hennessy became upset as she told Parliament how victims kept their abuse secret for many years.

"They weren't believed and institutions covered it up and people took their lives," she said, holding back tears.

"They could not bear to live with the consequences of being a victim of child sexual abuse when no-one believed them.

"If we don't start taking our obligations seriously around the protection of children then we don't deserve to sit in this Parliament."

Victoria's Opposition has given the legislation bipartisan support after leader Michael O'Brien initially said he needed to ensure the bill did not "infringe on other religious freedoms".

Catholic orphanges were always full to busting.  Now where did those kids come from ? 

Where I grew up , the big catholic place had a church , a school, a priests residence and a nunnery ?

And a path between the priests place and the nunnery , with big hedges hiding it.

Is this another power play by Spud on Scomotose?

Really, there are few so versatile as you in full retreat PT - desperate, pathetic and funny - all at the same time!

Still trying to find a loophole or waiting for divine intervention?

See below.  ps George went to school, seminary and/or shared parishes with all these offenders, but knew absolutely nothing. 

A Catholic priest left a 14-year-old boy in a seminary common room with several other boys before another priest came and "selected" him for abuse, says an explosive new statement of claim.

By Farrah Tomazin, Chris Vedelago and Debbie Cuthbertson

SEPTEMBER 17, 2019

Some of the Catholic church’s worst paedophile priests shared victims, passed on details of vulnerable children considered easy targets and worked together to conceal their crimes as part of informal networks of sexual abuse hidden in Australian seminaries, schools and parishes.

An investigation by The Age has identified for the first time that many priests involved in historical sexual abuse of children did not simply act as individuals but formed clusters, or paedophile rings, throughout Victoria, from the western district to the Gippsland region and in suburban Melbourne.

Established in 1923, Corpus Christi has produced generations of priests, including former Archbishop of Melbourne Denis Hart, Brisbane Archbishop Mark Coleridge and George Pell, who was the rector of the seminary in the mid-1980s. It has also trained a litany of offenders, from Thomas O’Keefe to Kevin O’Donnell, Robert Claffey and Ridsdale.

 A snapshot of 34 Corpus Christi graduates who were accused or convicted of committing acts of child abuse, and for whom reliable records exist, found that 17 priests had offended within three years of being ordained. Four began offending even before they were ordained, prompting serious questions about the way young men were selected and trained for priesthood at Corpus Christi.