"...It is evident that there is a possibility that an innocent person has been convicted because the evidence did not establish guilt to the requisite standard of proof." - Chief Justice Susan Kiefel, High Court of Australia quoting from the judgment of all seven judges of the High Court - Chief Justice Susan Kiefel and Justices Virginia Bell, Stephen Gageler, Patrick Keane, Geoffrey Nettle, Michelle Gordon and James Edelman in George Pell v The Queen, 7 April 2020 *** The trial, retrial and conviction for historical child sexual assault of Cardinal George Pell, the Prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy at the Holy See in Rome, gained international attention. In April 2020, in a remarkable unanimous decision, the High Court of Australia quashed the conviction. Gerard Henderson BA (Hons) LLB, PhD is executive director of The Sydney Institute - a forum for debate and discussion which enjoys good relations with both sides of Australian politics. He is a columnist for the Weekend Australian and writes the weekly Media Watch Dog blog. Gerard Henderson presented the ABC TV Four Corners program on former Australian Labor prime minister Bob Hawke in August 1994 and was a panellist on the ABC TV Insiders program between 2002 and 2019. His books include Australian Answers, Menzies' Child: The Liberal Party of Australia and Santamaria: A Most Unusual Man.

The advent of the Internet, exponential growth in computing power, and rapid developments in artificial intelligence have raised numerous cybersecurity-related ethical questions across various domains. From a liberal democratic perspective, this work analyses key ethical concepts in the field and develops ethical guidelines to regulate cyberspace.

In 2018 Cardinal George Pell, Australia’s most powerful Catholic, was found guilty of five sexual crimes against children and sentenced to six years’ jail. He was the most senior Catholic figure in the world to be charged by police and convicted of child sex offences. George Pell was a Ballarat boy who studied at Oxford and rose through the Catholic Church ranks to become adviser to Pope Francis and Vatican treasurer. He was expelled from the Pope’s inner circle. As an outspoken defender of Church orthodoxy, supported and championed by the powerful, Pell’s ascendancy was seemingly unstoppable. The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Abuse brought to light horrific stories about abuse of the most vulnerable. Pell portrayed himself as the first man in the Catholic Church to tackle the problem. But questions about what the Cardinal knew, and when, persisted. Louise Milligan pieces together decades of disturbing activities highlighting Pell’s actions and cover-ups. The book is a testament to the most intimate stories of complainants. Many people entrusted their secrets to be told here for the first time. Multi-award winning Cardinal reveals uncomfortable truths about a culture of entitlement, abuse of trust and how ambition can silence evil.

Cardinal George Pell pleaded not guilty before a jury to child sexual assault charges in 2018. The public knew little of the proceedings because the trial judge had imposed a suppression order, prohibiting the media from publicising the evidence and court proceedings. Fr Frank Brennan SJ was asked by the Australian Catholic bishops to follow the proceedings and to offer commentary on the conduct of the proceedings once the suppression orders were lifted. The bishops asked that the commentary be seen, as far as possible, to be clear, objective and impartial. Cardinal Pell granted Brennan access to the published transcript of the proceedings. At the first trial, the jury could not reach agreement. So Pell was tried again when the jury convicted him of all five charges. Brennan attended critical parts of both trials, as well as the unsuccessful appeal before Victorian Supreme Court and the successful appeal in the High Court of Australia with all seven members of the nation's highest court acquitting Pell of all charges on 7 April 2020. After the initial conviction and after the ultimate acquittal, Brennan wrote a series of articles and was interviewed in the media. This book provides a chronology of his reportage, including an assessment of the flawed adverse findings made against Pell by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. Brennan identifies the failures of the Victoria police, prosecution authorities, and Victoria's two most senior judges. Brennan concludes that these failures 'did nothing to help the efforts being made to address the trauma of institutional child sexual abuse. As a society we need to do better, and the legal system needs to play its part.'

Winner of the Walkley Book Award 2020 'Gripping and insightful' - Chrissie Foster, AM There was an eerie silence in the packed courtroom as everyone looked towards the foreman of the jury. 'Guilty' he pronounced five times. The third most senior Catholic cleric in the world had been found guilty of sex crimes against children, bringing shame to the Church on a scale never seen before in its history. Investigative journalist Lucie Morris-Marr was the first to break the story that Cardinal George Pell was being investigated by the police. In this riveting dispatch, she recounts how the cleric was trailed by a cloud of scandal as he rose to the most senior ranks of the church in Australia, all the way to his appointment by Pope Francis to the position of treasurer in the Vatican. Despite anger and accusations, it seemed nothing could stop George Pell. Yet in 2017 he was charged by detectives, returning to Australia to face trial. Take a front row seat in court with the author as she reveals the many intriguing developments in the secret legal proceedings which the media could not report at the time. Fallen reveals the full story of the brutal battle waged by the prince of the church as he fought to clear his name, including a ferocious bid to be freed from jail. The author also shares her own compelling personal journey investigating the biggest story of her career and the frequent attacks she endured from powerful Pell supporters. This book also charts how Pell's shocking conviction plunged the Vatican into an unprecedented global crisis after decades of clergy abuse cases. It is a vitally important story that will fascinate anyone interested in the failure of the Catholic Church to address the canker in its heart.

Innocent! That final verdict came after George Cardinal Pell endured a grueling eight years of accusations, investigations, trials, public humiliations, and more than a year of imprisonment after being convicted by an Australian court of a crime he did not commit. Led off to jail in handcuffs, following his sentencing on March 13, 2019, the 78-year-old Australian prelate began what was meant to be six years in jail for "historical sexual assault offenses”. Cardinal Pell endured more than thirteen months in solitary confinement, before the Australian High Court voted 7-0 to overturn his original convictions. His victory over injustice was not just personal, but one for the entire Catholic Church. Bearing no ill will toward his accusers, judges, prison workers, journalists, and those harboring and expressing hatred for him, the cardinal used his time in prison as a kind of "extended retreat". He eloquently filled notebook pages with his spiritual insights, prison experiences, and personal reflections on current events both inside and outside the Church, as well as moving prayers.

In this magisterial work, leading cultural critic Mary Eberstadt delivers a powerful new theory about the decline of religion in the Western world. The conventional wisdom is that the West first experienced religious decline, followed by the decline of the family. Eberstadt turns this standard account on its head. Marshalling an impressive array of research, from fascinating historical data on family decline in pre-Revolutionary France to contemporary popular culture both in the United States and Europe, Eberstadt shows that the reverse has also been true: the undermining of the family has further undermined Christianity itself. Drawing on sociology, history, demography, theology, literature, and many other sources, Eberstadt shows that family decline and religious decline have gone hand in hand in the Western world in a way that has not been understood before—that they are, as she puts it in a striking new image summarizing the book’s thesis, “the double helix of society, each dependent on the strength of the other for successful reproduction.” In sobering final chapters, Eberstadt then lays out the enormous ramifications of the mutual demise of family and faith in the West. While it is fashionable in some circles to applaud the decline both of religion and the nuclear family, there are, as Eberstadt reveals, enormous social, economic, civic, and other costs attendant on both declines. Her conclusion considers this tantalizing question: whether the economic and demographic crisis now roiling Europe and spreading to America will have the inadvertent result of reviving the family as the most viable alternative to the failed welfare state—fallout that could also lay the groundwork for a religious revival as well. How the West Really Lost God is both a startlingly original account of how secularization happens and a sweeping brief about why everyone should care. A book written for agnostics as well as believers, atheists as well as “none of the above,” it will permanently change the way every reader understands the two institutions that have hitherto undergirded Western civilization as we know it—family and faith—and the real nature of the relationship between those two pillars of history.