Royal comission: Ballarat priest provided character reference for Gerald Ridsdale

By Jane Lee
Age
May 26, 2015

http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/royal-comission-ballarat-priest-provided-character-reference-for-gerald-ridsdale-20150526-gh9u11.html

Fr Adrian McInerney, parish priest at Ballarat's St Alipius said he did not provide a reference for Gerald Ridsdale to protect the reputation of the church. Photo by Daniel Hartley-Allen

Gerald Ridsdale leaves court in 1993. Photo by Geoff Ampt

Former Ballarat Bishop Ronald Mulkearns was the "pivotal person" responsible for failing to prevent widespread child sexual abuse at Catholic-run schools there, his former secretary has told a royal commission.

Father Adrian McInerney was Bishop Mulkearns' secretary between 1973 and 1978, when disgraced serial paedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale was moved to numerous parishes amid allegations of child sexual abuse against him.

Asked on Tuesday to point out those responsible for the offending on Tuesday, Father McInerney said Bishop Mulkearns and all of the church should take "some responsibility" for the abuse.

The church had never "gone far enough" in addressing child abuse. When pressed, Father McInerney said that Mulkearns was "possibly the pivotal person ... in retrospect, he needed to remove people completely from ministry".

Father McInerney is the priest of St Alipius parish in Ballarat East, where much of the child abuse was found to have occurred in the 1960s and 1970s, including by a clergy paedophile ring of Christian Brothers such as Robert Best, Edward Dowlan and Stephen Farrell.

Father McInerney took minutes at meetings where it was decided Ridsdale would be moved. He said there were often reasons given at the meetings for why priests were being moved and acknowledged that in one set of minutes, the reasons discussed could only have been alleged "sexual transgressions" by Ridsdale. 

Yet Father McInerney had "no recollection of any such conversation" where he was told Ridsdale was abusing or suspected of abusing children.

Counsel assisting the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, Gail Furness, SC, asked when he first decided "Bishop Mulkearns should take some responsibility for the offending which occurred under his watch?"

Father McInerney said it may have been after he gave a character reference for Ridsdale when he first faced child sex offences in 1993.  He had agreed to help Ridsdale on a "minor matter" without knowing or asking him what the matter was, saying he took him at his word.

Ms Furness said that some might think this "reckless".

The priest denied giving the reference to protect the reputation of the church or Ridsdale.

When he heard Ridsdale's charges read out in court "I was horrified ... I was shocked. I didn't know what to feel or think or do."  

Commission chair Justice Peter McClellan said: "Father it might be that what you are now telling us about your lack of knowledge (and reaction in court) may not be correct."

Father McInerney said he did not leave when he heard the charges, possibly because he was intimidated by the court and did not know this was an option.

He had admired Ridsdale at the time for his treatment of young people.

When he visited him in Mortlake, he thought a billiard table he had set up "for the young people of the parish" was a good idea. Later, he realised this was a trap set up to abuse children.

Ridsdale pleaded guilty in May 1993 to 27 offences against eight children. He was sentenced to two years, three months imprisonment. He was previously a chaplain at St Alipius when Father McInerney was an assistant priest there. But Father McInerney insisted that they never lived together in the church's presbytery.

Ridsdale is currently serving an eight-year sentence for 30 other offences against children. He will appear at the commission via video link from prison on Wednesday.