Paedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale tells Royal Commission about the trap he set

By Louise Milligan
ABC - 7.30
May 27, 2015

http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2015/s4243786.htm

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.

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.

LOUISE MILLIGAN: Ballarat's most prolific abuser was priest Gerald Francis Ridsdale.

GERALD RIDSDALE, CONVICTED PAEDOPHILE: I swear by almighty God that the evidence I shall give in this Royal commission shall be the truth.

LOUISE MILLIGAN: It's believed his victims are in the hundreds, and today, for the first time, he has had to publicly answer for his past.

PETER MCCLELLAN, ROYAL COMMISSION CHAIR: Did it occur to you at the time that you were hurting the children?

GERALD RIDSDALE: Your Honour, I'm not sure. I don't know. I don't know what I was thinking.

LOUISE MILLIGAN: But first came the revelation that Ridsdale himself had been sexually abused when he was a child.

COUNSEL ASSISTING: It was kind of a sexual testing sort of thing. That happened as well, didn't it?

GERALD RIDSDALE: Yes, that did.

VIV WALLER, LAWYER: I would hope that the Royal commission might be exploring the rather complex relationship between sexual abuse as a child and the question as to whether or not that plays a role in sexual offending for some people in the future.

LOUISE MILLIGAN: Gerald Ridsdale's nephew is David Ridsdale. Over four years until 1982, he was his uncle's victim.

DAVID RIDSDALE: I was abused in a variety of cities in Victoria and New South Wales, including Edenhope, Ballarat, Apollo Bay, Inglewood, Mortlake, Elsternwick, St Kilda ... (faltering) ... White Cliffs, Mildura, Horsham and Wilcannia. I stopped counting after that.

LOUISE MILLIGAN: David Ridsdale has travelled 16,000 kilometres from London back to Ballarat.

So how does it feel coming back to Ballarat?

DAVID RIDSDALE: It's always difficult and, um, you know, this is a place that's hard to be near because lots of memories. ... Some of the things I thought were normal in my childhood just weren't normal at all.

LOUISE MILLIGAN: Until now, it was believed that the Catholic Church first learned of Ridsdale's crimes in 1975, but today it emerged the Church was first told back in the early-'60s.

GERALD RIDSDALE: The first complaint that ever came in was in my first year as a priest. ... I drove a lad home to near Winchelsea, and while I was there, I remember going into his room and fondling him while he was showing me something in the cupboard. ... Then later the bishop called me in, Bishop O'Collins, and said there had been a complaint. And he said, "If this thing happens again, then you are off to the missions."

VIV WALLER: Bishop O'Collins knew in 1962 and told Ridsdale that unless he addressed his behaviour, he'd be off to the missions or perhaps off the mission. Now that indicates that a conversation in fact took place, although Father Ridsdale is saying he has no recollection of that conversation.

LOUISE MILLIGAN: Today, counsel assisting pressed Gerald Ridsdale repeatedly to admit he must have told Church officials about his offending. What Ridsdale offered up was a litany of memory failings.

GERALD RIDSDALE: I can't remember any of this. ... I don't know. I don't think so. I can't remember. ... I've got no recollection of it. ... I probably would have, but I don't remember anything - anything specific about it.

LOUISE MILLIGAN: You have hundreds of clients who were victims of Catholic clergy as children and they have crystal clear recollections of what happened to them. It's seared in their brain. And yet this former priest can't remember key details about the abuse.

VIV WALLER: It is very distressing for survivors to see him give evidence in court and it can be very distressing for some people to think that he cannot recollect them at all, particularly those people that he groomed into thinking were special and special to him.

LOUISE MILLIGAN: Gerald Ridsdale started abusing his nephew David when David was in primary school. It often happened in the priest's car when the pious boy was being driven by his uncle to country parishes.

DAVID RIDSDALE: He was driving to the church with me in the car, and then he would molest me genitally and kissing and so on and then drive on to the church and get out and say mass. And I would sit in the back as he'd talk to his parishioners about, you know, loving and caring and being a good Christian. And, you know, that's when I started to see through the facade and see the wizard behind the screen. You've got a man up there telling you how to be morally correct, and then on the way home, he'd molest you. So, you know, no, it didn't sit well in my head.

LOUISE MILLIGAN: We've come back to St Alipius, East Ballarat, where the sprawling Ridsdale family came to worship and to be educated.

So what sort of - what sort of place was it here, David?

DAVID RIDSDALE: It's one of the things you - you don't know how wrong something is when you're going through it, and, um, it was horrific. He was an extraordinarily charismatic man and people who weren't being abused by him thought he was a wonderful priest.

LOUISE MILLIGAN: And so, for instance, your extended family, before this came out, before there were any obvious clues, they had no idea that he was this monster.

DAVID RIDSDALE: No, no, they didn't.

LOUISE MILLIGAN: Today, for the first time, the man David Ridsdale calls a monster finally gave some glimpse into who he is and why he was prepared to hurt so many children.

GERALD RIDSDALE: I was out of control, really out of control in those years. ... Well I had a pool table and it was just known that anyone who wanted to come was welcome to come and play pool. There was no sense in pretending, I suppose ... but it was to trap.

COUNSEL ASSISTING: Now you knew what you were doing - were committing crimes against children, didn't you?

GERALD RIDSDALE: Yes, I did.

COUNSEL ASSISTING: You'd known from the very beginning in 1961 when Bishop O'Collins spoke to you that what you were doing was committing criminal acts.

GERALD RIDSDALE: Yes.

COUNSEL ASSISTING: Did you see them, in addition to criminal acts, as moral failures on your part?

GERALD RIDSDALE: Yes. Yeah, they were serious, serious sins.

LOUISE MILLIGAN: By the time that Gerald Ridsdale reached the Mortlake parish in the early 1980s, his offending had spiralled completely out of control. The commission heard that parents knew, the principal at the school knew, a local doctor knew and a boy that he had met through the Big Brother program was living at the presbytery. He was sleeping in Gerald Ridsdale's room.

COUNSEL ASSISTING: You molested any boy you could get access to in that school, didn't you?

GERALD RIDSDALE: I molested boys, yes.

COUNSEL ASSISTING: Well, any boy that you could get access to.

LOUISE MILLIGAN: For his nephew, all of this came too late.

DAVID RIDSDALE: The hardest part for me is that they knew before I was born and, um, none of it had to happen, none of it. Um, yeah, so the Church protected themselves over their congregation and they failed their congregation.