Ridsdale Shouldn't Have Had Priestly Power

Daily Mail
May 28, 2015

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/aap/article-3101695/Ridsdale-shouldnt-priestly-power.html

At a time when Catholic families placed priests on a pedestal, Gerald Francis Ridsdale held an "almost supernatural" level of power even in his own family.

He was charismatic and many were in awe of him, his nephew David Ridsdale recalls.

Ridsdale's mother would be frantic when he came home to visit, ordering his six siblings to get their cars off the driveway hours before his arrival.

He appeared to be a hardworking priest who helped his parishioners, particularly the needy and youth.

But it was all a ruse that was allowed to continue for decades and, as one judge put it, plummeted to the depths of evil hypocrisy.

Ridsdale used his exalted position in the eyes of Catholic families and communities to find his prey.

Father Adrian McInerney admired Ridsdale's ability, and even what he did for youth, saying Ridsdale sought out families in need when he went to a parish.

He later realised that was part of Ridsdale's ploy.

"So, when I stated what I thought was a virtue in him, as I reflected, it became clear it was in fact part of his modus operandi, if you like," said Fr McInerney, who along with then-Bishop George Pell accompanied Ridsdale to his first court appearance in 1993.

Fr McInerney recalled seeing Ridsdale had a small billiard table and a TV screen for playing games in his lounge room.

"At the time I thought what a good idea to engage young people in that way.

"When I looked at the charges at the trial I looked back and, well, I was horrified that that's what they were there for."

Even Ridsdale admits the drop-in centre was a trap.

"There is no sense in pretending, I suppose, because if there was any kind of good motive about it being a drop-in centre but it was the trap," he told a Catholic Church Insurance investigator in 1994.

He explained his pattern to the child sex abuse royal commission's Ballarat inquiry this week.

"It's obvious now to me that a pattern would have been, or a way of seeking victims, would have been to look for the vulnerable or to recognise the vulnerable, but not always vulnerable or poor ones.

"I would have made sure that I was in a situation where there was no one else around and I would have told the children to keep quiet about it."

He abused the children, mainly boys and many altar boys, in the sacristy, presbytery and confessional; in his car; when he took the children away after gaining their parents' trust; before and after mass, first holy communion, confirmation and weddings.

He took a boy and girl away from their father's gravesite after presiding over the funeral so he could abuse them.

An 11-year-old was warned that if he told his parents, he would not become an altar boy and God would not like him.

BAV, another altar boy, did not think he would be believed if he told anyone Ridsdale sexually abused him.

"Father Ridsdale was a priest and was so respected, especially in the eyes of my parents," BAV, now 54, told the royal commission.

"Priests had so much respect from parents and the like. Catholic families at that time almost idolised the local priests."

Ridsdale himself says around the time he was parish priest in Inglewood in 1975: "I was out of control, really out of control in those years."

He was a prolific offender in the town of Mortlake in 1981 and 1982.

"I got out of control again. I went haywire there. Altar boys mainly. They came over to the presbytery.

"It was no secret around Mortlake eventually about me and my behaviour. There was talk all around the place, amongst the children and one lot of parents came to me."

His replacement as parish priest at Mortlake was stood up against a wall by four parents on his first night there. They told him if he interfered with any of the kids he would be gutted.

Father Dennis Denehy later said he thought every boy aged 10-16 at the school was molested by Ridsdale.

Ridsdale knew it was wrong, yet he never stopped nor thought for a moment about the lives he was destroying.

Australia's worst pedophile priest can't even remember the names of all the children he abused over four decades.

Hearing that one boy would not let anyone touch him after the abuse, Ridsdale said he never thought about the impact of what he had done.

"I didn't know that then, but I do now," Ridsdale told the commission.

He was only concerned for his own sexual gratification? "That's right."

Ridsdale admitted he hurt the children and knew it was wrong.

"It was morally wrong and it was legally wrong.

"Yes, they were serious sins.

"I'd be fearful all the time of someone reporting me."

Even if confronted, he would have lied.

"That's all part of the pedophile thing; the deceit, hiding things, cover up, trying to look good.

"That's what I was doing all the time, all my life.

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

Yet this priest had been molesting children even while studying in the seminary.

Ridsdale was ordained on July 25, 1961, at Ballarat's St Patrick's Cathedral. The first complaint to the church that he was abusing a child came in his very first year as a priest.

Now 81, Ridsdale admits someone like him should never have been a priest.

"There should have been a better screening process that was much more thorough, a psychological process that was much more thorough than anything that was conducted then," he said.

He also admits he should have been stopped by the church, which moved him between parishes and sent him for counselling.

Two Ballarat bishops knew of Ridsdale's crimes, one as early as 1961, and two Sydney archbishops knew he had "sexual problems" and should be kept away from children, the royal commission heard.

Ridsdale said he accepted the church should have ended his life as a priest once his problems were recognised.

He knows he would have been defrocked and jailed had the bishop he first discussed his offending with gone to police.

"It would have, and I am now sorry that it didn't; that it didn't happen," Ridsdale said.

"It would have saved so many others."

There were only a couple of years - before he was first charged and then laicised - when Ridsdale did not abuse children.

He says it was after he returned to Australia in 1990 following treatment in an American centre where two-thirds of the 30 priests in his group had pedophilia problems.

Nothing was said that they shouldn't be allowed to be priests.

"I acknowledge that it should have been, it should have been uppermost in the minds of people but I can't remember it ever being discussed."

Ridsdale was finally defrocked in November 1993, after his first convictions that year.

He has been in jail since 1994, convicted in four separate court cases of abusing more than 50 children and handed an effective sentence of 28 years' jail.

It was only in jail that he'd felt closeness with an adult, during a three-year close relationship with another prisoner.

As he gave evidence to the royal commission via videolink from jail, one of his victims stood up to get a closer look at the man in the dark green prison jumper on the screen.

The priest who had raped the then 14-year-old after he had gone to him for advice about his sexuality was no longer two to three times his size.

"When I stood up and looked at him, he was my size," Stephen Woods said.

"This time I wasn't a kid, I was a man.

"I saw him and I thought, `You know, you're not so powerful any more'."