A modern day witch-hunt is said to involve the unreasonable pursuit of someone who has a 'different' point of view or characteristic. Accusations, intimidation and falsehoods are the order of the day. To bring the 'witch' down someone must point the finger at them and then at least one person must go on the hunt.
A recent article in Eureka Street written by freelance journalist Alan Atkinson suggests that Adelaide Catholic Archbishop Philip Wilson — recently convicted of concealing the abuse of boys by paedophile priest James Patrick Fletcher — considers himself to be a victim of such malice. Atkinson expresses the view that Wilson may well be right.
So, here I am, outing myself as chief finger pointer. I am a survivor of sexual abuse by Fr Fletcher. It was me who first made a complaint to NSW police that Wilson knew what Fletcher had been up to. It was me who wrote an opinion piece for Fairfax asking what Wilson knew and when. It was me who appeared on ABC TV naming the Archbishop. By extension, it must be me who initiated the witch-hunt and stirred up public hysteria.
Credit where it is due to Mr Atkinson who notes that he deplores the sexual abuse of children and the concealment of that abuse. However, as a journalist writing in a Jesuit publication, I am not sure it is reasonable for him to suggest that Wilson has been 'stoned by all and sundry in the national village square'.
No one I know — victim, supporter or reporter — has ever sought anything other than accountability from people in the Catholic Church (including Wilson) who until relatively recently were insisting that the Church knew nothing about the child abusers in their ranks — a now thoroughly discredited claim.
It is also, I suggest, unrealistic for Mr Atkinson to think the media won't report on such a high profile case, or ignore public demands for the Archbishop's resignation or dismissal.
Here are a few irrefutable facts. Archbishop Wilson has been convicted of a crime in NSW by a court after allegations by a number of child sex abuse survivors (some of whom have never met each other), an exhaustive Special Commission of Inquiry, a police strike force investigation, consideration of the merits of the case by the NSW Director of Public Prosecutions, the approval of the NSW Attorney General to proceed to prosecution, and four appeals by