At the outset, I agree with the High Court’s decision that there was insufficient evidence to convict Cardinal Pell. That aside, many people still maintain conflicting opinions. Because of such biases, a training study of a matter like this from a language-only perspective has benefits because it challenges the Analyst to set aside their bias and focus only on the language used.
In this blog, I will concentrate primarily on denials. There are many other incidental observations but in this matter, the nature of the denials reigns supreme.
Before moving to the analysis, one of several principles of Language Analysis is based on the premise that we are all psychologically conditioned, starting at an early age, not to tell lies. We may not be aware of it, but it is psychologically troubling to tell a lie. We thus develop ways to overcome the psychological difficulty by using a variety of responses to avoid an outright lie when answering an allegation.
One common recourse is to use future tense: ‘I wouldn’t do something like that’. Another is to answer an accusatory question with a question. Another is to vilify the accuser. Another is to use a phrase like, ‘What I can say is that did not happen’ (they are simply telling you what they can say. Bill Clinton and Joe Biden both use this recourse. By way of a local example, at a Senate estimates enquiry, Prime Minister and Cabinet deputy secretary Stephanie Foster was observed winking towards a colleague. When challenged, she said, ‘I can say categorically I have at no stage intentionally winked at Senator Birmingham. It’s either capturing me with an eye closing or there’s some other reason.’ She later conceded she may have been winking at a colleague who had just joined the table).
Another common ploy is to ‘reject’ or ‘deny’ the allegation but not the act. Consider the ‘denial’ some years back now as offered by Julie Bishop and Peta Credlin when it was alleged there was conflict between the two:
‘Julie and I strongly reject any attempt to present our working relationship as anything but strong and constructive.’
Bishop and Credlin are rejecting the ‘attempt’. They did not deny there was prior conflict.
Any such responses as those touched on above – and there are many similar – should be regarded as weak denials.
Similarly, making a claim of being ‘innocent’ or ‘not guilty’ has proven to be a weak denial. Again, it is a psychological escape to say, ‘I did not do ………’. It puts the allegation in the realm of a legal decision.
In contrast, a reliable denial consists of four elements. First, it is ideally made in an open statement and not in response to a direct question: both truthful and deceptive respondents will usually say ‘No’ to a direct accusatory question.
Second, the denial should include the pronoun, ‘I’, which shows the respondent’s attachment and commitment to the denial.
Third, the denial should contain a phrase equalling, or exactly equivalent to, ‘did not’. A Phrase like, ‘I reject the allegation’ does not measure up: the person is merely setting aside the allegation and not denying the act.
Fourth, the respondent should include the description of the act alleged. A good reliable response in an open statement would be, ‘I did not sexually assault a choir boy.’
This leads us, first, to a statement made by Cardinal Pell at a press conference he called in Rome before he returned to Australia.
‘I am innocent of these charges. They are false … I’m looking forward, finally, to having my day in court … The whole idea of sexual abuse is abhorrent to me … All along I have been completely consistent and clear in my total rejection of these allegations.’
It passes test number one: it is an open statement.
It passes step number two in that he uses ‘I’.
He uses the word. ‘these’, which implies there were other matters – otherwise he would have used the definitive article, ‘the’. (Stepping out of the bounds of language analysis, there were other allegations of a sexual nature made against Pell).
He then resorts to ‘innocent’ and ‘charges’. As mentioned, using ‘innocent’ is a weak denial. Relying on ‘charges’ enables him to avoid stating the alleged sexual assault.
He said, ‘The whole idea of sexual abuse is abhorrent to me’. This is termed a ‘countermeasure’, which are indirect statements not directly relevant that are offered to attest to the person’s credibility and thus unlikelihood to commit the act(s). (ie. I wouldn’t cheat on my wife. I am a married man with kids; I swear on my mother’s grave; I’m a minister of the crown; etc). In this case, it is a motherhood statement to counter the allegations. Almost everyone finds sexual abuse abhorrent.
(Below is an example of a countermeasure by Dr Sam Sheppard – the real ‘Fugitive’ on which the TV series and the Harrison Ford movie were based. He made the statement to police six days after his wife’s murder. He was later convicted of murder:
‘I am not guilty of the murder of my wife, Marilyn. How could I, who have been trained to help people and devote my life to saving life, commit such a terrible and revolting crime?’)
Countermeasures are rarely used by truthful subjects. They have no need. They just tell it as it is.
Pell said, ‘All along I have been completely consistent and clear …’ Again, this is a countermeasure: if someone repeats an assertion does not contribute more to an argument or a defence beyond the initial claim.
He finishes by saying, ‘… my total rejection of these allegations.’ As mentioned above, such ‘rejections’ are a common recourse to deny an accusation. He is rejecting the allegation and not the act. It is not the same as saying, ‘I did not sexually assault two choirboys.’ If he did not commit such an act, it would have been very easy for him to say that.
I will touch briefly on some interesting points in Pell’s interview with the police (which is available on the web). He also provided a prepared statement for the interview. In essence, he made five denials in the statement:
- ‘show them [the allegations] to be wrong’
- ‘I have to rely on the law and my conscience which say that I’m innocent’
- ‘The allegations are the product of fantasy’
- ‘[interview of staff] would confirm that the allegations are fundamentally improbable and most certainly false’
- ‘laying of charges which on proper examination will be later found to be untrue’
In Example 1 Pell states the allegation is wrong. For an allegation to be ‘wrong’, it is different to the allegation being ‘false’, or ‘not true’. By dint, there must be a ‘correct’ allegation, which in turn implies something did happen. By way of example, if a person gives a wrong answer, there is a right answer. If a person’s understanding of a concept is wrong, there must be a correct understanding. If the allegation is wrong, there must be an alternate and correct allegation. (Again stepping outside language analysis, prior to the interview, Pell stated he believed the allegations related to after choir practice and not after a Mass. In the interview, he said, ‘No, that’s not quite, I never got information about it was after Mass. It was after choir practice. That’s what came through to me I think. That’s my recollection …’).
Example 2. Claiming to be innocent is a weak denial. It is tantamount to saying the accusations will not be proved in court. It is not the same as saying, ‘I did not sexually abuse two choirboys.’
Pell includes his conscience, which puts the denial into a moral as well as a legal framework. What can be wrong morally need not be wrong legally. Whenever a person does something morally wrong, they need to rationalise in their mind an excuse to carry out the act. Stated differently, unless we have a gun held to our head or similar, we do not do anything we do not want to do. Our conscience may kick in later but at the time we override or tell our conscience that it was the right thing to do – otherwise we would go nuts. At the time of the decision, what was ‘wrong’ by moral standards was ‘right’.
Example 4. His use of ‘fundamentally’ indicates there is missing information: its use does not mean the allegations were totally false, only ‘fundamentally’ so. Once again, it is the allegations that are improbable and false and not the alleged actions. Moreover, if an action is improbable, there is some probability, so there is a contradiction in terms. What is remotely probable is not ‘false’.
Example 5. It is the charges, and not the alleged action, that will be found to be untrue.
In the interview with the police, he made eight statements that could be taken as denials:
- Oh, stop it.
- What a load of absolute and disgraceful rubbish. Completely false. Madness.
- Completely false
- Completely false.
- Well, need I say any more. What a load of garbage and falsehood – and deranged falsehood.
- That’s completely false and as I’ll be able to demonstrate I was out the front of the Cathedral then. I was always out the front of the Cathedral, I never came back with the kids
- So I was never ever walking along any corridor with choirboys
- And that I’m certainly not guilty
Pell sidesteps the question where he said he exposed his penis by saying, ‘Oh stop it.’
He said ‘completely false’ to each of the allegations where he forced his head onto the boys’ penis. These are weak denials. A strong denial would have been to the effect, ‘I did not do it.’
Answer 5 in the list is a denigration of the allegation.
Answer 7 is a denial of walking along a corridor with choirboys and thus only an indirect denial he accosted a choirboy in a corridor. Stated differently, it would have been easy to say, ‘I did not molest a choirboy in a corridor.’
Saying ‘I’m certainly not guilty’ is not to say, ‘I did not do it’. But Pell’s answer here is in response to a question on what he would like to say about a possible charge. So, it is appropriate to answer in terms of a legal framework where matters rest on available evidence. But it is not a denial of the allegations.
In summary, none of the above denials, both in his prepared statement and the interview, measure up to a committed denial of saying to the effect, ‘I did not sexually molest any choirboy.’ They are all unreliable denials.
Also of interest, Pell asked nearly as many questions as the interviewers. He who asks the questions controls the interview. These were four of the questions asked in response to a question:
- ‘This is after the Mass?’,
- ‘After Sunday Mass?’,
- ‘In the sacristy, after Mass?’,
- ‘This is in the sacristy at the Cathedral after Sunday Mass?’
Essentially the same question four times. Answering a question with a question is a common way to avoid a responses.
Moreover, he is asking where the alleged incident took place: as stated above, he was originally under the impression the alleged incident occurred after choir practice. There are two points relevant to this.
First, if a person is accused of crime, and if they did not commit the crime, invariably they will state at the outset that they did not do it.
Second, assume you are a schoolteacher accused of sexually assaulting a student after class. Would you ask an interviewer which classroom the incident was meant to have taken place if it did not happen? Absolutely not. If you didn’t do it, that would be your primary response.
Clearly, Pell is capable of phrasing a legitimate denial. He said in his prepared statement, ‘I had nothing to do with the choir and I didn’t know any choirboys in 96.’ This is a convincing and reliable denial.
In his statement, he relied on countermeasures. They are included more to attest to his good character as a countermeasure to alleged sexual molestation. Countermeasures he used are:
- contrary to everything I hold dear.
- contrary to the explicit teachings of the Church which I have spent my life representing.
- [the accusations are] made against me knowing that I was the first person in the Western world to create a church structure to recognise, compensate and help to heal the wounds inflicted by sexual abuse of children at the hands of some in the Catholic Church.
- when I as Archbishop of Melbourne was in the process of actually reformulating the Church’s approach to allegations of child sexual abuse.
The use of ‘actually’ means there are two or more thoughts or propositions. It is not clear what the other thought is: it could be that the Church’s handling of child abuse allegations was wanting. Another is as a countermeasure to distance himself from the allegation.
Following the decision of the High Court, Pell made a statement to the Media.
He said, ‘I have consistently maintained my innocence while suffering from a serious injustice …’ Maintaining one’s innocence is not a denial of the alleged act.
He said, ‘I hold no ill will toward my accuser, I do not want my acquittal to add to the hurt and bitterness so many feel. There is certainly hurt and bitterness enough.’ Hurt and bitterness were repeated, indicating this thought was prominent in his mind. He does not say he was hurt and bitter. This leaves his accuser. But if there was no sexual assault, his accuser would not have felt hurt or bitterness.
He said, ‘However my trial was not a referendum on the Catholic Church; nor a referendum on how Church authorities in Australia dealt with the crime of paedophilia in the Church. The point was whether I had committed these awful crimes, and I did not.’
In the interview with police, he said about the allegation, ‘Well, need I say any more. What a load of garbage and falsehood – and deranged falsehood.’ He insinuated in several answers that the allegations were fabricated. Now, he acknowledges there were ‘awful crimes’.
By saying, ‘I did not’ is the closest he has come to making a reliable denial but it is weakened because it is out of sequence. A committed denial would be to the effect, ‘I did not sexually assault the choir boys which was the point in contention.’
He said, ‘The only basis for long-term healing is truth and the only basis for justice is truth, because justice means truth for all.’ One presumes he is talking about his own healing – if there was no sexual assault, the victim would not need to heal. He mentions ‘truth’, and repeats the word three times. The way he phrased it diminishes his remark to a motherhood statement by omitting ‘the truth’ in each of the three references. Arguably, by omitting ‘the’, this statement about truth and justice does not necessarily relate to his matter and is therefore little more than a countermeasure.
Nowhere in the many statements made by Cardinal Pell did he say he did not sexually assault the two choir boys.