AUSTRALIA
Newsweek
BY SOFIA LOTTO PERSIO ON 8/15/17
An Australian court heard harrowing details of historic child abuse perpetrated by former priest Gerald Ridsdale, one of Australia’s most notorious pedophiles.
Eighty-three-year-old Ridsdale pleaded guilty to 23 charges Tuesday, including two counts of rape and one of buggery, for abusing 12 children, aged six to 13, between 1962 and 1988 in the Victoria state city of Ballarat and the surrounding area.
Ballarat is considered to be one of Australia’s worst affected areas for incidents of sexual abuse by Catholic priests. It is named in Vatican Cardinal George Pell’s charges of historic sexual abuse as he served in the diocese first as an assistant parish priest in 1972 and later, between 1973 and 1984, as an episcopal vicar. Pell pleased not guilty in a first hearing at a Melbourne magistrate’s court in July and will return to court in October.
One of Ridsdale’s victims was a girl whose father woke her up on two occasions to see the priest, who then sexually assaulted her, the court heard on Tuesday.
“[Her] father carried her to the confessional booth and took her clothes off her, then carried her to the altar and lay her down,” crown prosecutor Jeremy McWilliams said of the second occasion, in 1974, quoted in the Australian Associated Press.
According to the prosecutor, Ridsdale indencently assaulted her, then told her: “Jesus died for our sins so we could be forgiven and if I confess to this sin I might be forgiven,” before kissing her on the cheek.
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