THE STOKE ORPHANAGE CASES. Complete Acquittal of Accused.

Free Lance, Volume I, Issue 24, 15 December 1900, Page 6

THE STOKE ORPHANAGE CASES. Complete Acquittal of Accused.

AT last the Stoke Orphanage cases are finished. For the last three months or more they have been prominently before the public eye, and have been canvassed from end to end of the colony. The charges were so grave, and were made with such positiveness, that nothing would have satisfied the public but investigation of the most ■searching and exhaustive character. Just such an investigation have they received. * * * No fair critic can refuse to acknowledge that the Government have manifested throughout this disagreeable business a high sense of their responsibility. At the outset some attempt was made to drag it into the Parliamentary arena and to make political capital out of it. But the Government wisely removed it from the strife of party by appointing a Uoyal Commission to make full inquiry into the conduct and management of the Orphanage. When that Commission, after patient inquiry, made its report, the Government promptly acted upon it by ordering the police to initiate proceedings against two of the teaching staff of the institution, viz., Brothers Kilian and Wybertus. * * * They were duly proceeded against, and, after the taking of voluminous evidence in the lower Court, they were committed to trial on a number of charges. That trial they have passed through, and on every charge they have been acquitted. Brother Kilian, otherwise James Solan, was tried on two charges of common assault against boys of the Orphanage, and Brother Wybertus, otherwise Edouard Ferrier, was tried on one charge of common assault and three of indecent assault. In every instance the verdict was for the accused. And in two instances the case for the Crown completely broke down. * * * No trial could have been stricter or more searching. Every possible effort was put forth to secure a conviction. The evidence was collected by clever detectives, skilful lawyers conducted the prosecution, and every care was taken to obtain a jury panel that could not be suspected of any religious bias in favour of the accused. Some of the cases were heard before Mr. Justice Edwards, and some before the Chief Justice. And in each and every instance the result has been the same — a verdict of acquittal for the accused. * * • Now there has been a disposition in many people's minds to believe

the very worst that has been urged against these men, merely because they were members of a monastic order. In some quarters there has been an inclination to take it for granted they were guilty for the simple reason that they were Roman Catholic monks, and to hold them up to public odium and execration in consequence. But those who have followed the trials must now admit, however strong their prejudices may have been, that although the prosecution was skilfully conducted, it would have been surprising if the jury on such evidence had found any other v^idict than ilia' which they did. So contradictory was the testimony, that in one case it elicited from Mr. Justice Edwards the remark that b* would not hang a cat upon it. *r * * The accused men have passed through a severe and searching ordeal, and they are entitled now to the credit of an ample vindication. Let it be remembered in their favour that when news of the intended prosecution reached them in Australia they voluntarily came back to submit to trial. They have had a fair field and no favour, and not one of the offences for which they were indicted has been proved. Under these circumstances it is surely unnecessary in a British community to appeal for a generous recognition of their innocence. It is a cardinal principle of British jurisprudence that every man is held to be innocent until he is proved to be guilty. And these men have submitted to the most rigorous tests the law could apply, and have emerged from the trial unscathed.