AUSTRALIA
Business Insider
SIMON THOMSEN
It was 1993 when Gerard Ridsdale, Australia’s most notorious paedophile priest, was first convicted of child sexual abuse, the beginning of an avalanche of charges over the next 20 years involving more than 50 children, including his nephew, David. As the Ballarat priest headed to court dressed in civilian clothes, wearing dark glasses, he was accompanied by a colleague, George Pell, in the black robes of a priest. The two men once shared a house together in the diocese during the 1970s.
Just three months earlier, David Ridsdale attempted to alert Pell about the abuse he suffered at the hands of his uncle. Pell denies knowing anything about father Ridsdale’s abuse until that point. The cardinal also disputes David Ridsdale’s recollection of their discussions.
Gerard Ridsdale’s first 18-year imprisonment occurred the same year Forrest Gump was released. With apologies to the creators of the much-loved movie, we have learned in recent days that Pell is, a lot like the central character in Forrest Gump: his life is strewn with inflection points of historical and moral import; times that reasonable observers look back on now and see, at many points, opportunities to intervene.
But the man at the centre of it all had no idea what was happening around him.
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