The scandal of defending George Pell: Amanda Vanstone's moral support

Former Howard government minister and ambassador to Italy, Amanda Vanstone, is broadly incorrect to characterise Australians as a pack mob, ignorantly going after Cardinal George Pell in the Into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse and in media commentary.

In recent weeks, questions have been asked in public sphere debate about whether or not Cardinal Pell's inability to complete his long-promised travel to Australia for the royal commission, and to give evidence instead by video link, is an insult to victims and to an inquiry that seeks to uncover the framework and reasoning as to why sexual abuse occurred for so long in religious institutions.

In her Age column Vanstone presents a picture of contemporary humanity as having momentarily fallen away from civilisation, fallen under the "primal" animal instincts and seeking to bring about the fall of "a decent, honest, intelligent man" because the public are not satisfied that perpetrators of child sex crimes conducted by Catholic priests and religious have been adequately punished. In other words, baying for the blood of, in her view, the wrong man, a "blood sacrifice".

Vanstone gives an example to foster the idea of an unthinking mob seeking vigilante-like retribution for child sex crimes, referring to a past case in which an Anglican bishop in a South Australian diocese was forced to retire early after helping a priest who had molested a boy leave the country. For Vanstone, the problem was that there may have been others who knew about but failed to report the priest's crime, while the early retirement of the bishop meant one man took the fall for the failings of many, as a result of the aggressive demands of the people out for blood-any blood.

There are (at least) three problems with the way in which Vanstone is twisting the role of Cardinal Pell in public discussions, royal commission hearings and debate, and presenting a vague character reference; most of this based in an irrational misjudgement of how public debate on scandal and moral panic operates.

1. Organisational accountability

Firstly, while many people may be aware of a crime, responsibility and accountability does rest heavily on those who were in a position to discipline, prevent, report or otherwise lead in an organisational setting. In the case of both Catholic and Anglican churches, that is a diocesan head, a bishop. To ask a bishop to account for his actions in a royal commission or to explain how the knowledge of a crime did not cross his desk during a period in which he was given charge and responsibility over priests is not a call for blood. It is a very rational, coherent and well-considered request so that organisational, administrative reporting and other controls can be in place to help avoid this happening to a child in a trust setting again.

The Royal Commission Into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has terms of reference that make very clear its focus is on systemic failures by institutions that care for, support or provide services to children, with deliberate interest therefore in the governance arrangements that obscured the truth and pathways to justice for such large numbers of victims. This framework for inquiry is therefore focused not merely on recording and responding to the individual stories of abuse that happened to so many children, but on determining the veracity of the stories that have been given by church leaders as well as the failure to relate these abuses in the appropriate, legal ways. It is an inquiry into the failure of church leadership-and that will by necessity involve public sphere discussion about the leaders of the Catholic Church such as George Pell. This is not bashing-it is necessary public interest about a powerful figure within an institution that perpetrated crimes against vulnerable children.

2. Misunderstanding the role of scandal

Second is Vanstone's misunderstanding of scandal. While the public most often understands scandal through unfair celebrity gossip today, scandal is a particularly important media tool that developed across the twentieth century as a way of helping to change attitudes of complacency towards the institutional protection of the powerful and the invisibilisation of their victims. Scandal relies on a combination of media revelation of a cover-up and a media audience positioned to express outrage at that cover up.

In Australian masculine sporting culture, for example, the scandal reporting and a growing outrage among the public has helped (a little) to turn around the perennial problem of women involved in the social aspects of elite sport being sexually assaulted, with masculine-dominated football clubs, state police, departments of public prosecution and high-profile commentators helping to bury the story so the game is not affected, while the women complainants are not given an opportunity for contemporary justice. Scandal reporting, outrage and cultural change work together to move towards a more egalitarian approach to justice.

In the case of the child sexual abuse scandal in Australia, scandal reporting includes, for example, outrage at the delays of having a senior Catholic leader (who had responsibility for governance across two archdioceses in Australia in the period of the royal commission investigation and an ongoing role in representing Australian Catholicism internationally), appear at the royal commission and the perception that a range of mechanisms are being used to prevent it being treated openly and honestly. It may be a mistaken impression, and the delays may genuinely be caused by illness, but public outrage is a tool to avoid cover-up, to ensure the information is clear and that those who held governance roles are held to account-whether innocent or not.

While Vanstone is, in some ways, rightly concerned that others who may have known of cases of abuse and did not report are somewhat invisible while bishops - as the public face of church governance - are held accountable, the royal commission's role is to have governance leaders account for the failures to ensure a safe, trustworthy organisation that can care for children with responsibility and safety. That is not baying for Pell's blood; it is a sensible, commissioned request for information from a figure of governance with responsibility.

3. Justifiable Moral Panics

Thirdly, Vanstone misunderstandings the nature of the moral panic around child sexual abuse perpetrated within formerly-trusted institutions that had responsibility for the care of children. Moral panics are not, as Vanstone puts it, a form of animal instinct to hunt in a pack against vulnerable prey (such as, apparently, a Catholic Cardinal). Moral panics and public debate-both reasoned and heated-occur as a result of a complex network of social factors, including media scandal reporting, audiences positioned to express outrage, existing debates on the acceptability and unacceptability of certain moral standards, necessary suspicion about institutions that have inequitable power to protect themselves and their senior members from criminal conviction and the extent to which there can justice given to victims-past and present-of various kinds of abuses.

Moral panics do, of course, rise sometimes for wholly improper reasons (for example, manipulation into a belief among some sectors of the public that all Muslims are terrorists and therefore a threat to everyday life). However, they also emerge for arguably very good reasons as well when there is a genuine, democratically-articulated debate around future liveability (for example, moral panic around the failure of governments to appropriately address and human-induced climate change).

In the context of child abuse, the moral panic is not unjustifiable. For most of the past century priests and religious figures have been suspected and sometimes convicted of the sexual abuse of children, typically with an understanding that uses the "small number of rotten apples" approach to the problem. This was never enough to produce a moral panic.

However, the moral panic has grown exponentially over the past few years. This has not been because of a less-rational use of moral panic over paedophilia (with the accusation "pedo" used improperly in some very local contexts as a vigilante weapon to discredit an individual-a very complex social formation; also a very separate issue), but as a direct result of the recent knowledge as to how widespread both child abuse in organisations has been and how effective the cover-up by those institutions has been. Not just a "few rotten apples" but a widespread practice that is criminal.

More importantly, if the moral panic is expressed through a call to bring church leaders to account, it is at least partly the result of a new understanding of the effects of child sexual abuse emerging in the public sphere. We are no longer talking about a bit of illicit touching, improper but broadly leaving victims unaffected in the context of their larger lives. Rather, there is growing outrage and anxiety over the extent of the abuse, in addition to the severe mental health as well as financial and social effects of child abuse perpetrated by trusted figures such as priests. Suicide is the most serious outcome of abuse that has not been addressed through accountability and institutional responsiveness.

If there is a moral panic, it is not because - as Vanstone has it - Pell is a hated figure of conservatism. Rather, it is a panic about the very serious effects on the most vulnerable. It is, then, scandalous to ignore the reasons for public sentiment towards church leaders who were in governance roles and who have been protected by their lack of vulnerability, by their institutional power and by the economic wealth and access to legal knowledge of their institutions.

The public questioning of George Pell is not, then, a vigilante attempt to shame or humiliate a figure made vulnerable by his notoriety, his politics or his position. Rather, it is a deeply rational and explicitly calm form of questioning that operates within a network of 'justice-seeking' that includes the royal commission and the important role played by quality journalists and opinion-leaders.

It is a form of justice-seeking that requires responsiveness from Pell. Character defences by former government ministers in the context of such an important scandal only lead to greater suspicion and, in fact, reduce the effectiveness of debate and dialogue.