AUSTRALIA
ABC – 7.30
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Broadcast: 27/05/2015
Reporter: Louise Milligan
One of the worst paedophiles in Australian history, Gerald Ridsdale, has talked about the abuse he perpetrated, who knew about it and, the traps he set for it, at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Ballarat.
Transcript
LEIGH SALES, PRESENTER: Gerald Ridsdale is one of the worst paedophiles in Australian history. His victims are thought to number into the hundreds.
He was a Catholic priest, moved around parishes in the Ballarat Diocese for years, long after the Church knew about some of his crimes.
He’s been convicted of multiple child sex crimes on four occasions and remains in prison.
But today, for the first time, Ridsdale has had to give evidence in public. He appeared by video link at the Royal Commission into Institutional Child Sexual Abuse and he revealed that the Catholic Church was aware of his abuse from the early-’60s, more than a decade earlier than previously thought.
Louise Milligan reports from Ballarat.
LOUISE MILLIGAN, REPORTER: For two weeks, Ballarat has been forced to face its bleak history.
In this courtroom, the shameful truth of a Catholic community, riddled with child sexual abusers for decades, has been revealed.
DAVID RIDSDALE, NEPHEW: The Church dictated the boundaries of right and wrong and the congregation’s relationship to the clergy was one of submission rather than supplication.
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