Australia prosecutor threatens media organizations, journalists on gag order

MELBOURNE, Australia — An Australian state prosecutor has sent letters threatening to charge media organizations and dozens of journalists with breaching a gag order that banned reporting of Cardinal George Pell’s convictions on charges of sexually molesting two choirboys, lawyers said Thursday.

Reporting in any format accessible from Australia of details of the former Vatican economy chief’s convictions in a Melbourne court in December was banned by a judge’s suppression order that was lifted only this week.

Such suppression orders are commonplace in the Australian and British judicial systems, and breaches can result in jail terms. But the enormous international interest in a criminal trial with global ramifications has highlighted the difficulty in enforcing such orders in the digital world.

Kerri Judd, director of the Victoria state prosecutor’s office, has written more than 100 letters to journalists and media organizations advising that she intends to charge them with offenses relating to reporting on the Pell case, said Jason Bosland, the deputy director of the Center for Media and Communications Law at Melbourne University. Bosland, a leading expert on suppression orders, said he calculated the number from consulting lawyers representing media clients facing charges.

A lawyer involved in several cases, who declined to be identified because he was not authorized to speak to the media, confirmed that more than 100 letters were sent. Some individuals received two or three letters, so the number of media employees facing charges could be fewer than 100, the lawyer said.