One man’s battle to lift the lid on evil: Cop who uncovered an unholy truth

By Daniella White
Sunraysia Daily
September 22, 2015

http://www.sunraysiadaily.com.au/story/3364066/one-mans-battle-to-lift-the-lid-on-evil-cop-who-uncovered-an-unholy-truth/

Retired police officer Denis Ryan blew the whistle on Monsignor John Day, who abused hundreds of children in Mildura and, inset, the book that tells his story. Photo by Carmel Zaccone

WHEN the Royal Commission into Child Sex Abuse was announced in 2012, Mildura man Denis Ryan jumped for joy.

For him, it was forty years in the making. A detective based in Melbourne, Mr Ryan transferred to Mildura in 1962 because his doctor said a drier climate would help his son’s asthma.

Within ten years he had uncovered shocking claims of sexual abuse against possibly hundreds of children at the hands of Monsignor John Day.

But in what he describes as one of the greatest criminal conspiracies ever in Victoria, his attempts to bring him to justice were thwarted by the “Catholic Mafia” within the police force, a corrupt court clerk and the church. 

“On my second day in Mildura I went to the CIB office and I met  senior detective Jim Barritt,” he said.

“When I had applied for the position here … a mate of mine at the time Dinny Barritt, who was a detective sergeant, … said for God’s sake don’t go to Mildura, my brother Jim is there and there’s something wrong with him in the head.

“I came to Mildura and met this Jim Barritt. The first thing that he did was he took me back to the presbytery and I met this Monsignor Day and I immediately recognised him as someone I had met previously when I was a uniformed cop in St Kilda.”

Mr Ryan had caught him years prior with a prostitute and his pants around his ankles.

“And so when we were driving back to the office I told Jim that I knew the priest and there was something wrong with him,” Mr Ryan said.

“Barritt than got stuck into me, raved on and called me all these different ways.

“Day asked me to come to the presbytery the next day and said I’d got my facts wrong.”

Of course he hadn’t got his facts wrong. This was certainly the man he had caught with a prostitute in St Kilda.

But he couldn’t have imagined the sheer evil he was capable of and the lasting damage Day did to Mildura.

About ten years after he arrived in Mildura, Ryan was called to St Joseph’s College by the then headmaster.

That was the first time he heard of Day’s sexual abuse.

But soon after an avalanche of claims against Day emerged

What Mr Ryan couldn’t have foreseen was the continued attempts by what he calls the “Catholic Mafia” within the police force to make sure Day was never brought to justice.

He said the Catholic Mafia worked alongside the courts, church and even the media to protect him. 

“The chief superintendent was the alleged head of it (the Catholic Mafia),” he said.

“He said to me when he offered for me to join, ‘our allegiance was to the cathedral’, but I said to him it was to the people of Victoria not to the Catholic church.

“What they did, was possibly one of the greatest conspiracies in criminal history in Victoria, even Australia.

“Thousands of children were then subjected to all these offences of buggery and sodomy and indecent assault … that’s what they did.”

Mr Ryan was forced off the case by his superior officers, but he couldn’t let it go.

He continued to collect statements from victims.