Abuse Claims Again Haunt Pell and Church

Daily Mail
May 22, 2015

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/aap/article-3092058/Abuse-claims-haunt-Pell-church.html

The new kids at school were warned who to avoid, boys were molested at the back of classrooms or even while sitting up front on the teacher's lap and children were raped on church properties.

In some cases every boy in class knew their turn to be abused would come. At one town's school, every boy aged 10 to 16 was molested.

What went on for decades in the deeply Catholic Ballarat diocese was blatantly obvious - as one victim put it - and widespread, yet no one stopped it.

Pedophile clergy got away with destroying so many lives for so long, and now its come back to haunt the Catholic Church and its most senior Australian figure Cardinal George Pell.

Cardinal Pell is a long way from Ballarat as he presides over the Vatican's finances in Rome. But victims in his home town are looking to the former parish priest for answers.

So too is the child sexual abuse royal commission as it investigates the church's many failings in recognising and dealing with what went on in Ballarat. Current Archbishop of Sydney Anthony Fisher describes it as the worst story in the church's history in Australia.

Commission chair Justice Peter McClellan has made it clear church figures, including Cardinal Pell, will have to answer serious allegations about what they knew and when, and some may have findings made against them.

The great tragedy is that the decades of horrific physical and sexual abuse could and should have been avoided.

Its effects are lasting and ongoing: 69-year-old victim BAS won't go back to church because he's frightened of anybody in a black coat and the smell of chalk; men have been left with crushed souls even into their 70s; and many young men in Ballarat have committed suicide or died prematurely.

The royal commission's investigation is far from over. Yet senior counsel assisting, Gail Furness SC, has already indicated it has uncovered evidence church figures knew of the abuse in the early 1960s.

Australia's worst pedophile priest, Gerald Francis Ridsdale, has been convicted for abusing more than 50 children across Victoria over three decades dating back from when he was ordained in 1961.

He began abusing children when he was in the seminary at Corpus Christi between 1954 and 1958, Furness told the Ballarat hearing this week.

When he molested a boy from the Villa Maria boarding school in East Ballarat, in his first year as a priest in 1961, the child's parents complained to the Ballarat Bishop James O'Collins.

Ridsdale later told a Catholic Church Insurances investigator that Bishop O'Collins told him "if this thing happens again then you're off to the Missions" and sent him to Mildura.

Furness said there was evidence a later Ballarat Bishop, Ronald Mulkearns, knew in 1975 that Ridsdale had abused boys.

Yet the church moved Ridsdale between parishes.

Furness said it was not until June 1988 that Ridsdale was suspended, 13 years after Bishop Mulkearns first knew he was sexually abusing boys.

Based on Furness' opening address, lawyer Viv Waller says she anticipates more material will come to light during the commission's investigation about what the Diocese of Ballarat knew about Ridsdale and when they knew it.

"If he could have been stopped in the early 1960s, there would be hundreds of victims and families who could have been spared the trauma of sexual abuse," Waller told AAP.

"You've got to think how much suicide and premature death could have been avoided if in fact Bishop O'Collins had taken Ridsdale out of circulation in the early 1960s."

Victim Paul Tatchell says like any other organisation, the buck has to stop with someone in the Catholic Church and in Australia that means Cardinal Pell.

"He may not have the intestinal fortitude or the ability to see beyond his own vanity. But it's his ambition that got him there and it will take his humility to get him out of there," he told the commission.

"Time will tell if George can find an ounce of the courage, an ounce of the courage, you'll bear witness to throughout these proceedings.

"You cannot seek atonement when you're still in denial."

The fingers point at Pell because he was assistant priest in the Ballarat East parish from 1973 to 1983 and lived in a presbytery with Ridsdale who was abusing boys at St Alipius primary school.

As Episcopal Vicar for Education in the Diocese of Ballarat from 1973 to 1984, Pell presided over St Alipius where four Christian Brothers were pedophiles.

Many victims ask how could Father Pell and others not have known? Cardinal Pell has steadfastly maintained he didn't.

But BAB, who was an altar boy for Father Pell, said he never told the then parish priest about the abuse.

"There were many, many opportunities for me to tell Father Pell what Brother Fitzgerald had done to me but I never did. I can't explain why."

Cardinal Pell this week again rejected claims he tried to bribe one victim - Ridsdale's nephew David Ridsdale - to keep quiet, ignored complaints and was complicit in moving Ridsdale to a different parish.

Timothy Green, 53, says when he was 12 or 13 he told then Father Pell that Brother Edward Vernon Dowlan was abusing boys at St Patrick's College in late 1974.

"Father Pell said `don't be ridiculous' and walked out," Green told the commission.

"His reaction gave me the impression that he knew about Brother Dowlan but couldn't or wouldn't do anything about it."

Cardinal Pell said he has no recollection of the conversation and can't remember Green.

"To the best of my belief, this conversation did not happen."

Green says it was common knowledge among the students in his year Brother Dowlan was abusing many of the boys but it was not discussed.

"I find it inconceivable that none of the brothers, lay teachers, the nurse, or even some of the parents knew about the abuse by Dowlan.

"It was just so blatantly obvious and every boy in the class knew that their turn was going to come up at some stage."

Another victim, BAQ, said Father Pell and Bishop Mulkearns must have known about the abuse at the Christian Brothers-run St Alipius.

"If children from other totally separate primary schools in the area knew what was going on at St Alipius, I cannot accept that Bishop Mulkearns or Father Pell didn't know what was happening.

"It is inconceivable that they didn't know."

Even convicted Ballarat priest Paul David Ryan has told the inquiry Bishop Mulkearns knew about him in 1977 but he was not stopped from working as a priest until 1993.

"Ryan thought Bishop Mulkearns buried his head in the sand about the sexual abuse issues in the diocese," Furness said.

In strongly Catholic Ballarat, victims want the royal commission to give answers to questions they've been asking for many years, answers they've been yearning for, often in stoic silence.

Of the 140 abuse survivors in a men's group, half of them don't want to be identified beyond adopted leaders Peter Blenkiron and Andrew Collins.

Others stop these men in the street to tell them they too were sexually abused and had never told anybody, but had been inspired to get help.

"I know that many of these people will never come forward and speak publicly about their abuse," Collins told the commission.

"They still feel Catholic guilt, which means that you don't speak out against the church."

Collins says now is the time for the Catholic Church's most senior figures to lead real change.

"I would like to see George Pell and the current Pope seriously have a look at this whole issue," he told reporters.

"If they were serious about child abuse, the very first thing they would do is do something. There's a lot of words but no action."