Like a witless dog still gnawing a bone, Gerard Henderson continued his bleat about Crikey in The Weekend Australian. And, true to form, Henderson misrepresents what his critics have said in an attempt to score a cheap debating point.

After quoting only the first half of a sentence from my piece last week, he wrote, “What Salter fails to understand is that pedophiles and those who protect them try to disguise their crimes.”

For the record, the second half of that sentence published in Crikey (but deliberately not quoted by Henderson), was: “… and to the ways in which the church has sought to ignore, deny and cover up the crimes of the pedophiles in their ranks”.

In any case, it is surely a curious proposition — even of twisted Hendersonian logic — to suggest that attempting to hide a crime such as paedophilia somehow renders the act itself less morally repugnant.

Not surprisingly, The Australian today has declined to publish a letter to the editor that made precisely these points.