The Crown.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVIII, Issue 51, 20 December 1900, Page 19

The Crown.

No comment on the Stoke Orphanage persecution would be complete without a special word of reprobation for the manner in which the case for the Crown was worked up and condncte 1 from start to close. We refer (1) to the agents

selected for the preliminary investigations ; (2) to the methods pursued by them ; and (3) to the conduct of the cases when before the court. In one of the charges to the jury, Judge Edwards remarked that the Stoke Orphanage cases were not regarded as matters between tne public and the individuals charged, but between the public and the denomination to which the Marist Brothers belonged. This latter was plainly the view accepted and acted upon by the Crown. For ouipcul we have no objection Lo investigation, in these or any other cases, conducted by capable and respectable police or detectives of any creed or of no creed. On this account we have no special complaint to make regarding the apparently studied exclusion of Catholic police officials from the preliminary inquiries in connection with the Stoke Orphanage cases. But the Marist Brothers and the Catholic body, and men of every creed and party are fairly entitled to demand answers to the following pertinent queries : (1) Is notorious membership of the Orange Society with the rampant bias which is ordinarily associated with it, a qualification for conducting a delicate inquiry affecting the members of a Catholic monastic community '? (2) Was it a mere coincidence that the police — like the amateur detectives of Nelson and its neighborhood — selected the great mass of the Crown accusers and witnesses from the criminal or ' committed ' inmates and ex-inmates of the Orphanage,' and that the charges of indecent assault rested in nearly every case on the evidence of boys of illegitimate birth, or who were brought up in houses of ill-fame, or amidst other surroundings that were favorable in a high degree to the early acquisition of a knowledge of immoral practices ? » # # Again : (3) We want to know why five of the Crown witnesses were spirited away — one of them from employment with a respectable Catholic — and sent to the Burnham State Industrial School r And how, after a few weeks' sta\ there, they displayed under examination in the Supreme Courl a knowledge of sexual anatomy (and even of its Latin technical tern^) which amazed the hearers from whom our information was received at first hand? We confess to an aching curiosiiy to know by whom 'these young gentlemen' were ■coached.' Yet again : (4) One of the most striking facts elicited from the Crown witnesses — a fact, too, which is capable of still further proof — is this : that previous to this inquiry accusing ex-inmates of the Stoke Orphanage had spoken in laudatory terms to employers and others of the kindness of the Brothers ; had written letters filled with grateful recognition of the services rendered to them; had frequently returned thither to renew old associations ; and, stranirosfc of all, had never breathed to human ear a hint of cruelty or neidect or of unmoral behavior on the part of those charged with the management of the institute. In addition to this, at least pnma facie positive evidence of collusion or conspiracy, and of intimidation or attempted intimidation and corruption of witnesses for the defence, was given by some of those who were called in support of the prosecution. Now we are entitled to ask: Is it true that the suspiciously sudden volte-face of certain ex-inmates of the Stoke Orphanage from open friendliness to open hostility towards the Brothers coincided with their interviews with the police who were working up the case on behalf of the Crown ? * * • The explanation may, perhaps, be not wholly unconnected with the fact that the Crown witnesses — who in their normal employment were earning only from four shillings to twelve shillings a week — suddenly found themselves passing rich on ten shillings a day, with the (to them) joyful whirl of city life, and a prolonged holiday from work. It is scarcely necessary to point out that such terms constitute, by themselves alone, a bribe to accommodating perjury which would form a temptation of almost irresistible force to boys of the class from which the Crown witnesses in the Stoke ca&es were chiefly drawn. There are certain other matters in connection with the management of Crown witnesses which will take a great deal of strenuous explanation. (5) Why, for instance, were the boys — when being ' herded ' by a police official at Nelson and Wellington — prevented Sunday after Sunday from goin^ to Mass? (6) Has the Police Commissioner any explanation to offer for the fact — vouched for by the Nelson Eceninij Mail — that a crowd of the boys, (that had been kept away from the Catholic church on

Sunday morning, September 23), appeared the same evening in a Wesleyan conventicle, with the guardian constable at their head, to listen to the (previously announced) falling of water-spouts of no-Popery declamation? In the court, the Crown — with full view of the strong tide of sectarian passion that was flowing — acted throughout on the assumption th;it those who were opposed to (he accused in religious belief were alone to be trusted with the verdict. The name of every known Catholic on the jury pane! \\:s eha!!e.!\g"d throughout. The Crown cross-examined one of the accused, with a singular display of animus, on matter which, as the N.Z. Times points out, was ' absolutely irrelevant.' Why this was done, says the same Wellington daily, ' unless it, was for the purpose of improperly Massing the jury, is a question of some interest to thpse who like to believe that nothing unfair is possible in the administration of our law.' And, finally, it blundered oq and on, while case after case broke down with splendid monotony, until the prosecution became so clearly a persecution that fair-minded men of c\ery degree were sickened and ashamed of it. But happily, the means which seemed best calculated to compass the ruin of the Brothers, only served to make their vindication the more complete. The serious financial losses which they have undergone in a battle which has not been all their own give them a claim upon the purse of the Catholic body which we trust will be speedily and generously recognised.