AUSTRALIA
The Australian
October 20, 2016
PETER HOYSTED
ColumnistCanberra
@JacktheInsider
The first episode of Ballarat’s Children details a criminal conspiracy between Victoria Police and the Catholic Church in 1972. The prolific pedophile priest Monsignor Day avoided charges, victims were denied justice and the detective who sought to bring Day to account, Denis Ryan, had his career roughly terminated.
It is my strong view that this incident known now as the Mildura Conspiracy led to a proliferation of clerical abuse within the Ballarat diocese. Offending priests learned they could act with impunity and Bishop Ronald Mulkearns understood he was required to do no more than move offending priests from parish to parish when complaints grew too loud.
In some considerable way, this answers the question, why Ballarat?
Still, we are left to ponder why so many pedophile priests were active in that particular diocese and not in others like, for example, the adjoining Sandhurst diocese.
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