We need to be like Australia and insist that our children get used to wearing large-brim hats at an early age.
KEVIN O'SULLIVAN
Parkdale
Art exhibition
I am perplexed about and annoyed that the Starting Point exhibition for Artists Open Studios closed early on Saturday and Sunday of the last weekend of this important event.
As someone who has been intimately involved with managing this event, I am aware how challenging securing volunteers can be as well as how costly it is to staff. But not having the starting point exhibition open to highlight and celebrate all artists, especially when galleries and studios must be open until 4.30, does not make sense.
I propose to buy this event for one dollar, since it appears to be of no value to the organisers.
KATHY CUNNINGHAM
Director, Empire Public Relations and Events
George Pell trial
Carol Webb, in her reply to my letter about priestly sexual abuse and the Cardinal George Pell trial, appears to avoid addressing what I actually wrote.
Instead, she suggests I am simply biased, ignorant of the trial and of the legal system.
Ms Webb suggests I "struggle when evidence-based criminal law ... is applied to the church's super-heroes like Pell."
Apart from the fact that Cardinal Pell is no "super-hero", and the Church is not Marvel comics, my points about the trial were about the evidence and the lack of evidence.
Ms Webb spends a lot of time on the judge's sentencing remarks, and states that "there was no hint that this senior judge doubted the evidence that had been produced in court."
Perhaps Ms Webb does not understand the judge's role in sentencing? When the jury gives its verdict the judge, like everyone else, is supposed to accept the jury findings as the facts of the case, no matter what they themselves believe.
The jury's verdict is the definitive statement of the facts and the judge states those as part of the sentencing.
Of course if an appeal overturns that verdict, the definitive statement of facts suddenly isn't such any more.
It is this power of the jury trial that is the problem when there is no evidence to base the decision on, rather just one word against another.
In the case of the trial of Cardinal Pell, it seems even worse than that.
As one person who sat through the whole trial later said, "Although the complainant got all sorts of facts wrong, the jury must have believed that Pell did something dreadful to him." And how does the jury come to that belief without any corroborating evidence?
Meanwhile, there is all the evidence against the accusation.
The complainant says the cardinal opened his vestments to reveal himself, yet the vestments do not open.
The complainant says the cardinal rushed to the sacristy immediately after the Sunday Mass to commit the abusive acts.
But the cardinal always went in procession to the exit and there greeted parishioners as they left, and was always accompanied at all times at the cathedral by aides.
The sacristy was always very busy after a mass, as was the cathedral, yet the claim is that the abuse happened in the sacristy with the door open and no one saw a thing.
While accusations of abuse are always horrible, they are not always true, and the accused is supposed to be assumed innocent until proven guilty, not the other way around.
When a trial appears to fail in such regard, it damages lives and the legal system at the same time.
K A BENFELL
Gonville
Send your letters to: The Editor, Whanganui Chronicle, 100 Guyton St, PO Box 433, Whanganui 4500; or email editor@wanganuichronicle.co.nz
