Ridsdale says he did not know Pell well

Sky News
May 27, 2015

http://www.skynews.com.au/news/top-stories/2015/05/27/paedophile-priest-didn-t-confess-offending.html

Convicted paedophile priest Gerald Francis Ridsdale has told the child abuse royal commission he did not have a particularly close relationship with Cardinal George Pell and did not discuss his offending with him.

'I never had much to do with him', he said.

Ridsdale says he can't remember having any dealings with now-Cardinal George Pell, despite living in the Ballarat East presbytery with him.

Ridsdale also said he can't remember asking then-Father Pell what he would say on his behalf at Ridsdale's first court appearance in 1993, when the two were photographed together.

In May 1993, Cardinal Pell accompanied Ridsdale to court in Melbourne where he pleaded guilty to 30 charges of indecent assault.

Ridsdale says it was his barrister's idea to ask Cardinal Pell to support him in court, not his and he didn't know him that well.

Ridsdale says he wasn't confident Cardinal Pell's character reference would help in court.

'I think we were clutching at straws', he said.

Ridsdale told the commission that he did not confess all his sins during confession once he left the seminary, and told no one he was abusing children when he was ordained in 1961.

'I didn't confess the sexual offending against children,' Ridsdale told the commission's Ballarat hearing, via videolink from jail.

'I don't think I told, would have told anyone at all,' Ridsdale said.

'I never told anyone. It's the sort of thing I wouldn't tell anyone.

'Looking back on it, I think that the overriding fear would have been losing priesthood.'

Asked by commission chair Justice Peter McClellan if it occurred to him at the time that he was hurting children, Ridsdale said he wasn't sure.

'I don't know. I don't know what I was thinking.'

The parents of a boy Ridsdale abused in his first year after being ordained as a priest in 1961 complained to then Ballarat Bishop James O'Collins.

Ridsdale told a Catholic Church Insurances investigator in 1994 that Bishop O'Collins told him 'if this thing happens again then you're off to the missions'.

Ridsdale on Wednesday said that would have meant he would lose his priesthood or be removed from parish work.

'I would have lost faith in myself because I was a very proud person. It just would have been devastating.' Ridsdale said he had never talked about his offending to anyone apart from during legal matters or in counselling.

'Through my life, as far as I know, I've spoken to no one except in legal matters or in counselling, but as far as friends or family or fellow priests, I had never talked to anyone.'

The 81-year-old has told the royal commission that he has no recollection of that or two separate incidents of a separate nature involving relatives but accepts it did happen.

'I've got no clear picture of those now.'

Ridsdale has been convicted in four separate court cases of abusing more than 50 children.