Should the Pope face charges?

By Brian Bethune - Saturday, September 11, 2010 at 8:23 AM - 0 Comments

Tiziana Fabi/AFP/Getty Images

God in the Dock, meaning God on trial, is a familiar concept in Britain, both from the title of a famous collection of essays by C.S. Lewis and as a general term for skepticism about religious belief and doctrine. But Pope in the Dock? Literally? Perhaps not in our lifetimes, as British lawyer Geoffrey Robertson concedes in The Case of the Pope: Vatican Accountability for Human Rights Abuse, a book set to appear just one week before Benedict XVI makes the first-ever papal state visit to Britain. But, Robertson argues, the once unthinkable idea that Benedict or a successor could be charged with obstructing justice or for “harbouring pedophile priests” is now very thinkable, and—given evolving trends in international human rights law—may soon be practical.

The plain facts of the case to be answered are horrific and undeniable. Since the dam crumbled around the turn of the decade, a cascade of child sexual abuse by Roman Catholic clergy has come tumbling into the open. So many cases emerged that the U.S. Catholic Bishops Conference commissioned an expert study, which concluded in 2004 that, since 1950, 10,667 individuals had made plausible allegations against 4,392 priests, 4.3 per cent of the entire body of clergy in that period. The total bill in settlements with victims is spiralling toward $2 billion and won’t stop, Forbes predicts, this side of $5 billion. Depressingly similar stories from other First World countries, including Canada, soon emerged; the situation in Latin America and Africa, where no investigations have ever been made, can only be imagined.

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Pedogate: reacting to the overreaction

By Colby Cosh - Monday, April 5, 2010 at 1:04 AM - 105 Comments

As a former newspaper columnist, I think I have pretty rock-solid law-and-order credentials. I recall arguing at various times, before a national audience, in hard type, that criminal justice is properly regarded as an orderly, deliberate species of revenge; that not only is the death penalty a proper prerogative of the state, but that the guillotine is the most humane and reasonable method of applying it; and that the Middle Eastern custom of severing the hands of thieves, while “barbaric”, may be ethically superior in some respects to our own methods of dealing with them.

So I trust I will not be accused of snivelling liberal cowardice when I ask: why should the National Parole Board necessarily come under suspicion or criticism for granting a pardon to Graham James?

It is common for ink-and-pulp tough guys like me to hold the NPB to a standard of perfection that may or may not be realistic. Without question, this body has made clumsy mistakes and appears susceptible to psychiatric fads, unscientific beliefs, and emotional manipulation by shrewd sociopaths. It is responsible for errors of the most spectacular, naïve, foreseeable kind, and it has learned to suffer beatings from the journalistic cudgels—albeit to no very impressive real-world effect—when it commits one. But where is the mistake here?

Is there some evidence that Graham James has re-offended since his release from prison? If there isn’t, on what basis can the decision of Pierre Dion be criticized? Since we have a system of routine, assembly-line pardons for offenders like James, what more can we expect that those given such pardons will do no harm? Has James done some? A radio personality in my city was heard to growl that someone at the Parole Board “ought to be fired”. For what? Accurately foreseeing that James was no longer a danger to the public?

The “fresh allegations” date back to James’ coaching career, and irrespective of his pardon, he is still subject to arrest and prosecution when it comes to offences for which he hasn’t yet been tried and punished. But people are talking as though “pardon” means “plenary indulgence”. James served his sentence—I won’t say “he paid his debt to society”, but he certainly discharged his specific debt to the state—and the history-effacing effects of pardons are rightly limited for sex offenders in the name of continued deterrence and protection of the innocent. And Theoren Fleury may be upset or uncomfortable that James received a pardon, but Fleury didn’t publicly allege anything against James until very recently, and his right to a hearing of his own grievance is in no way affected by the pardon.

‘Chinatown’ comes back to haunt him

By Brian D. Johnson - Thursday, October 15, 2009 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

If you’ve never seen Roman Polanski’s Chinatown, and still intend to, be warned that this piece begins with a spoiler. It’s the famous scene in which Jake Gittes, the private eye played by Jack Nicholson, bullies the mysterious Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway) into revealing that she conceived her daughter with her father. Dunaway’s lines, punctuated by Nicholson’s slaps—“She’s my daughter . . . she’s my sister”—are so familiar they’ve become the stuff of parody. But the most intriguing moment occurs just after, when Gittes turns to her and says, “He raped you?” Sobbing, she looks up at him, stricken by shame, then shakes her head, unable to answer.

This haunting exchange, which was not part of Robert Towne’s original screenplay, deepens the horror of a sexual crime with a creepy undercurrent of complicity. And that takes on a bizarre resonance in light of the current debate about rape, retribution and Roman Polanski. Three decades after Polanski fled America, convicted of having unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl, his past has caught up with him. After a marathon game of cat and mouse, the Los Angeles district attorney’s office finally has him cornered and awaiting extradition—thanks to Swiss police, who nabbed him at Zurich Airport as he arrived to accept a lifetime achievement award from a film festival. Continue…

Theo Fleury was abused: "An absolute nightmare, every day of my life"

By Charlie Gillis - Friday, October 9, 2009 at 11:28 AM - 109 Comments

Retired hockey star Theoren Fleury has at long last confirmed that he was sexually abused by his junior coach, Graham James, a trauma he says drove him to alcohol, drugs and promiscuity throughout his otherwise impressive 16-year NHL career. “The direct result of my being abused was that I became a f—ing raging, alcoholic lunatic,” he writes in Playing with Fire, an autobiography to be released this week, and provided in advance to Maclean’s. “[James] destroyed my belief system. The most influential adult in my life at the time was telling me that what I thought was wrong was right.

“I no longer had faith in myself or my own judgment. And when you come down to it, that’s all a person has. Once it’s gone, how do you get it back?” Continue…