This week’s Holy Smoke podcast asks whether Cardinal George Pell, jailed in Australia for paedophile crimes, could have been the victim of a hoax.
The possibility needs to be considered following the conviction in Britain of Carl Beech, formerly known as ‘Nick’, for inventing a non-existent Westminster sex ring in which VIPs supposedly raped and murdered children. He found a disgracefully gullible audience in the Metropolitan Police.
Beech’s serial lies were designed to destroy the lives or posthumous reputations of Lord Bramall, former head of the British Army, Sir Edward Heath, former PM, Lord Brittan, former home secretary, ex-Tory MP Harvey Proctor and Lord Janner, the late Labour politician.
Beech has been jailed for 18 years. Journalist Catherine Lafferty, who was in court for his trial, talks to me about the troubling parallels with the conviction of Cardinal Pell, former head of the Vatican finances, for child rape.
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