George Pell to Give Evidence in Person at Royal Commission, As Paedophile Gerald Ridsdale Appears Via Videolink
Herald Sun
Ridsdale, 81, is giving evidence to the Royal Commission today from his Ararat jail in a move victims hope will unlock decades of secrets about how the Catholic Church covered up child sex crimes. He has been in jail since 1993 for offending against 54 kids but says the tally realistically runs into the hundreds. Ridsdale told the hearing that he first offended when he was still studying to be a priest at Corpus Christi seminary in Werribee. He went on to molest so many children, he can no longer remember them all, he said. He said from a young age he was unable to control his sexual urges and hoped he would get “sexual instruction” while training to be a priest. It was at the seminary he first learned he had an attraction to boys.
He revealed he had a problem with masturbation while studying there and was told to stop it or leave, but said he never learned to control himself. “My desire to be a priest was so strong ... that I just wouldn’t have wanted to leave the seminary, I would have wanted to stay on regardless and push on,” he said. Ridsdale said during decades of abuse his greatest fear was losing his job. It meant he never confided the abuse to anyone, even when confessing his sins to fellow priests. “It’s the sort of thing I would never tell anyone. The overriding fear would have been losing the priesthood,” he said. “I was a very proud person. It just would have been devastating.”
Ridsdale said while he knew what he was doing was criminal, he didn’t know he was hurting children. He said he couldn’t remember what he was thinking at the time. Ridsdale first pleaded guilty to widespread abuse in 1993 when he was controversially supported in court by church figures including the now Cardinal Pell. Ridsdale today repeated admissions he first made to investigators in 1994 that he first molested a boy while studying to be a priest. Ridsdale said he was on a camp for underprivileged kids and had a vague recollection of “sleeping close to a lad and cuddling”. “It seemed to be just a need for intimacy, hugging and closeness,” he said.
“I think I’ve always felt the need for closeness.” Ridsdale revealed he had gone almost his whole life without any adult intimacy. But he said there was a three year period in prison in which he had a close relationship with a fellow prisoner. Meanwhile, in a letter to the Royal Commission overnight Cardinal Pell said he would be happy to appear in Ballarat in person. “Like everyone else I am horrified by the accounts that survivors have given in their evidence during the Ballarat hearings,” Cardinal Pell said. “I am also deeply saddened by the way Church authorities have failed in responding to these crimes. “So far I have not been asked to give evidence in any form, but as I have said repeatedly, I am deeply committed to assisting the Royal Commission and to do anything I can to help survivors. “This includes giving evidence in person, if asked to do so.” Cardinal Pell said he would also provide evidence in statement form or via videolink from Rome. Ridsdale will be grilled about who had knowledge of his offending and when and what steps were taken to deal with it. It is now known from evidence given at the commission that then Ballarat bishop Ronald Mulkearns routinely moved Ridsdale between parishes after allegations were levelled at him. He served at a string of parishes across regional Victoria before asking the bishop to stand him down in 1988 because he couldn’t resist the temptation of parish life. Ridsdale has claimed that by the 1980s his offending was an open secret, but church figures say they had no idea. Some of his victims have given chilling evidence about how they were routinely abused. He befriended the victims and set up an after-school boys gathering that he used to abuse kids. Victims were warned against telling anybody about the abuse. One girl was abused in a church confessional box, Ridsdale telling her she was wicked and needed to be punished. She was forced to say “forgive me father for I have sinned” before he abused her. Afterwards she was given a bag of lollies and told not to tell anyone. In a series of letters and interviews published by the commission it is revealed authorities did little to curb Ridsdale’s offending, except provide counselling and move him between parishes. Talking to church investigators in 1994, Ridsdale said at one point while stationed at Mortlake in the 1980s there was no stopping him. “It was no secret around Mortlake eventually about me and my behaviour; there was talk all around among the children, and one lot of parents came to me,” he said. “I got out of control again. I went haywire there. Altar boys mainly.” The Herald Sun revealed this week that the mother of a boy who was living with Ridsdale begged then Bishop Ronald Mulkearns to move him, but he refused, acting only when she threatened to call police. Mulkearns has also been accused in commission hearings of ignoring pleas from victims. In a letter to a victim in 1979, Ridsdale wrote as if they were lovers and told him some good would come from his abuse. “I don’t know how much you know about me or how much you’ve guessed, but you’re the first person I’ve ever wanted to open up to. You’re the first kid I have been honest with and warned off (a bit late unfortunately, but I suppose all experiences bring some good out in us),” he wrote. The commission heard that at one point the paedophile bragged to bishop Mulkearns of a close relationship with a young girl he met while in White Cliffs, NSW. But instead of acting on the revelation, Mulkearns warned Ridsdale he wasn’t to do anything that “might rebound on us later”. In 1988 Ridsdale asked Mulkearns if he could step down from parish work “so that I may be removed from the kind of work that has proved to be a temptation and a difficulty for me”. Mulkearns replied it would be an inappropriate step, adding: “I have every hope that nothing more will eventuate, but we have to do our part to ensure that it does not.” In another damning letter shown to the commission Mulkearns, on legal advice, refused to meet a mother of a victim of Ridsdale’s who had sought a meeting to discuss the abuse. The letters come as a senior priest conceded he thought Ridsdale’s serial offending must have been discussed at top-level meetings attended by Cardinal George Pell as early as 1977. Cardinal Pell has repeatedly denied any knowledge of Ridsdale’s decades of abuse prior to 1993. But Fr Adrian McInerney — now parish priest at St Alipius in east Ballarat, where dozens of kids were molested, and secretary of the church’s consultors committee in the 1970s — told the royal commission on Tuesday he thought Ridsdale’s offending would have been talked about at the committee’s regular meetings. Fr McInerney was heckled inside and outside the hearing yesterday after he shocked victims of abuse by saying he had admired Ridsdale because of his way with kids and “for what he did for youth”. He said he was horrified when he later learned of Ridsdale’s crimes. Contact: shannon.deery@news.com.au
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