Pedophile Priests to Take the Stand for First Time at Hearings

By Dan Box
The Australian
May 5, 2015

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Catholic clergy who have been found guilty of sexually abusing children will give evidence in ­Ballarat this month at a royal commission hearing into the church’s actions.

It is the first time convicted Catholic abusers will be called as witnesses before the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, which will also investigate the ­impact of these crimes on the community of Ballarat.

This month’s hearing will be the first of two held by the royal commission in the city, northeast of Melbourne, which is thought to have suffered some of the worst and most widespread church-­related child abuse in Australia’s recent history.

Several former priests and teachers in Catholic schools from Ballarat have been jailed for child abuse committed over several decades. Many of their victims are expected to give evidence before the commission, including those from St Alipius Parish and St Alipius Primary School, where one of the city’s most notorious Catholic abusers, Gerald Ridsdale, worked for several years.

Ridsdale was ultimately jailed for abusing more than 50 children between the 1960s and 80s, some of his victims being as young as four years old.

On the day of his first conviction, in 1993, television cameras recorded Ridsdale being accompanied to court by George Pell, who used to live with him in the presbytery at St Alipius, and was by then auxiliary bishop for Melbourne. Cardinal Pell went on to become Melbourne’s archbishop, then the archbishop of Sydney and is currently one of the most senior officials within the Vatican, with responsibility for the papal treasury.