A dozen Australian media firms have agreed to plead guilty for breaching a suppression order on reporting on the trial and conviction of former Vatican treasurer George Pell for child sexual assault in 2018, a court heard yesterday.
Pell was cleared last year of the sexual abuse charges after spending 13 months in prison.
The cardinal was found guilty by a jury in December 2018 of sexually assaulting two choirboys, making him the highest-ranking Catholic official convicted of child sex crimes.
Reporting on the trial and verdict was gagged by the County Court of Victoria to ensure the cardinal got a fair trial on further charges he was due to face. Those charges were later dropped.
As part of the agreement, the state prosecutor said it was dismissing charges of sub judice contempt against all of the media firms, and all charges against 15 reporters and editors at the newspapers, radio and television stations.
The surprise agreement was reached nearly two years after the charges were brought, nearly three months after the media trial began and 10 months after Pell was acquitted by the Australian High Court.
Despite the gag on reporting, foreign media published news on the outcome of Pell’s trial, naming him and the charges.
Australian media then published reports saying that they were unable to cover a major news about an unidentified high-profile person, with some pointing out that the news was accessible online.
The state initially alleged that dozens of media, journalists and editors, mostly with News Corp, and Nine Entertainment Co and its Fairfax arm, had breached the suppression order and interfered with the administration of justice in running the articles.
Breaches of suppression orders can be punished with up to five years in jail and fines of nearly A$100,000 (US$76,530) for individuals and nearly A$500,000 for companies.
Some charges had been dismissed over the past two years, but 79 charges remained as of January.
“The prosecution has resolved,” prosecutor Lisa de Ferrari told the Supreme Court of Victoria yesterday.
“Each corporate respondent has indicated that it will plead guilty in respect of each publication for which they are charged to contempt by breaching the proceeding suppression order. Given the plea and the acceptance of responsibility in respect of each publication ... the director [of public prosecutions] has determined that it is in the public interest to dismiss the remaining charges,” she said.
The companies have also agreed to pay the costs of prosecution, she added.
The plea hearing has been set for Wednesday and Thursday next week.
Last week, former editor of the Age, Alex Lavelle, the first witness to appear in the trial, told the court that he ran a story only to explain why the newspaper could not cover the news that was being reported overseas, as the newspaper had received numerous queries from the public.
Readers were “wondering if the Age was part of a Catholic Church conspiracy,” Matthew Collins, the lawyer representing Nine Entertainment, told the court.
Lavelle said based on legal advice, he believed the article did not breach the suppression order.
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