AUSTRALIA
The Australian
August 16, 2017
JACK THE INSIDER
ColumnistCanberra
@JacktheInsider
Gerald Ridsdale, the former Ballarat priest has pleaded guilty to a further 20 offences against 11 victims and his conviction formally handed down.
On the basis of convictions, numbers of victims and number of offences, Ridsdale is the worst sex offender in this country’s history. While Ridsdale’s defence team laughably called for the prospect of parole, he must die in jail.
I read a copy of one man’s victim impact statement over the weekend. It made me weep. It was no surprise that, when he delivered it to the court yesterday, County Court Judge Irene Lawson also broke down in tears. The court adjourned briefly while the judge composed herself. In all ten of the 11 victims in this round of prosecutions provided statements, detailing lives in disarray, filled with emotional, lifelong pain, surviving rather than living.
Despite having their moments in court, the mystical, magical word ‘closure’ and all it connotes continues to elude them.
The obvious question is how did a pedophile priest, active for thirty years or more, with more than 60 victims having now come forward, escape justice for so long? Ridsdale had been offending against children from the moment he became a priest in 1962. He was first convicted of child sex offending in 1993.
The answer, in part, lies in the conduct of the Ballarat diocese under Bishop Mulkearns and his predecessor, Bishop James O’Collins. These senior figures within the Church, effectively the chief executive officers of the Ballarat diocese were aware of Ridsdale’s offending and merely shuffled him around the diocese to new parishes and new groups of children.
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