Peter Hitchens – Mail on Sunday – October 23 2016
This is NOT justice – it’s a witch hunt
George Bell, Bishop of Chichester
The Great Child Abuse Inquiry continues to devour itself, in a storm of rumour and whispers. There is some justice in this.
The whole idea that this country is waist-deep in unprosecuted abuse scandals has always been based on allegations that cannot be objectively proved. Now this industry is the target of its own methods.
The whole country has become a vast kangaroo court, in which guilty and innocent alike are accused, and in many cases we can never find the truth.
For a year, I have been fighting the case of the late Bishop George Bell, whose courage and principle I have long admired, who was suddenly accused of long-ago child abuse by a solitary complainant, 57 years after his death. No other accusers have come forward.
To begin with, his own church, aided by several newspapers, the BBC and the police, acted disgracefully as if his guilt was proven. The police even said they would have arrested him if he hadn’t been dead, an absurd and meaningless statement which persuaded many he was guilty.
Now, thanks to relentless pressure by many good people, plus me, the BBC have honourably retreated, the police have softened their line, and the Church themselves have published a booklet about Chichester Cathedral in which they admit that the charges against Bishop Bell have never been tested in any court and are just ‘plausible’, a feeble word given that the accusation, if true, would strip away his good name for ever.
It’s not enough. But it took all the running we could do just to stay in the same place, returning to the old English custom that all are presumed innocent until guilt is proven. If the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary could grasp this point, their hopeless inquiry could be shut down before it soaks up the entire national budget and we could go back to proper British justice.
New Guidebook on sale in the Cathedral bookshop : “Chichester Cathedral – Society and Faith” [Pitkin 2016] – Page 37
The Bell Society 
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